


Phantoms and Fantasies

by MirrorMystic



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Tabletop Gaming, Comedy, F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Post-Canon, Tailwind Verse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-21
Updated: 2018-02-21
Packaged: 2019-03-07 20:56:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 34,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13443231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MirrorMystic/pseuds/MirrorMystic
Summary: In another time, in another life, the fate of the Phantom Thieves lies not in the cards, but in a roll of the dice- if their DM, Futaba, doesn’t just kill them all first.





	1. You All Meet at the Circus

**Author's Note:**

  * For [larkgrace](https://archiveofourown.org/users/larkgrace/gifts), [Alexilulu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alexilulu/gifts).



> I'd been batting around the idea of 'the Phantom Thieves play D&D' ever since 'Pillow Talk'. Now that 'Where the Lines Overlap' is finished, I was thinking of just leaving that idea be... until a certain tweet made me dust it off. So, here's to you, larkgrace, for inspiring this fic!
> 
> Incidentally, I'll be the first to admit that I don't actually know too much about D&D, so please don't be surprised if this supposedly D&D-inspired setting winds up feeling a lot like Tyranny, FFXIV, and Avatar: The Last Airbender. I hope you all enjoy the read!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Your adventure begins in the sleepy little town of Larksnettle, a backwater town in the kingdom of Corona, now under the control of the Umbra Empire. And, as luck would have it, the circus is in town..."

~*~  
  
The city of Larksnettle could hardly be called a city at all.  
  
It was a dump; a backwater. A tiny little town in the middle of nowhere, full of trappers with questionable hygiene who scraped a living from furs, pelts, and gristly rabbit stew. The air was thick with the acrid scent of wood smoke and pine needles, cooking fat and drying blood. And the snow, while pretty enough out in the forest proper, churned into slush beneath everyone’s feet, turning every dirt road into a slick, muddy mire.  
  
It was, in Makoto’s considerable opinion, everything she hated about the countryside. And, for reasons she couldn’t begin to fathom, Haru _loved_ the damn place.  
  
“Look at all this!” Haru beamed, spinning about with her arms outstretched. “Isn’t this liberating, Mako? To be out among the people, enjoying the great outdoors?”  
  
Makoto yanked Haru up out of the street. A mule and a cart laden with pelts trundled past, its owner shooting the duo a dirty look and muttering something about ‘tourists’.  
  
“My lady,” Makoto sighed. “I don’t need to remind you that we should be trying not to draw so much attention to ourselves.”  
  
“Then you can start by not being so stiff,” Haru teased, and clapped a hand against Makoto’s chest. Even muffled by her traveling cloak, her armor still rattled beneath. “Just Haru. Please.”  
  
“Yes, my-” Makoto stopped short. “...Haru.”  
  
“That’s not so hard, is it?” Haru grinned, pulling the hood of her striking crimson cloak over her voluminous hair. “See? I’m just an ordinary peasant girl- oh! Oh! Look! They’re selling little bits of meat on sticks!”  
  
Makoto pinched the bridge of her nose with a gauntleted hand, and followed Haru into the crowd. A moment later, Haru was enjoying a skewer and getting grease all over her fine silk gloves, chirping about how ‘rustic’ and ‘flavorful’ everything was out in the country.  
  
They passed underneath a banner that two men were hanging astride the town square. Makoto found herself intrigued, despite herself.  
  
Literacy was rare outside the church, so the common folk made do with pictographs. This banner was emblazoned with flames, laughing masks, and leaping twin lions. A theatre troupe, all the way out here? A circus, maybe?  
  
Whatever it was, it had these hicks in a festive mood. Makoto was grateful, at least- there was no shortage of crowds to disappear into. And a village this out of the way would have only a minimal Imperial garrison. They just had to stay quiet, keep their heads down, and act like they belonged…  
  
“That’s a fine ring.”  
  
Makoto froze. She clamped a hand around Haru’s wrist, the other resting on the hilt of her sword.  
  
“...Thank you,” Haru said warily, quietly spinning the ring around her finger so her family crest was facing her palm. “It was a gift.”  
  
There was a man sitting cross-legged on a mat in the snow, a wooden board across his lap. A pack beside him was filled to bursting with scrolls of parchment, and his fingers were stained with ink.  
  
“You are a long way from home,” the man said, his eyes hidden beneath a wide-brimmed straw hat. “You’ve come for the festival, yes? You and your… betrothed?”  
  
Haru and Makoto shared a look.  
  
“Y-Yes!” Haru said, a little too quickly, clinging to Makoto’s arm. “Yes, I am here with my lovely bride-to-be! Don’t we just make the sweetest couple?”  
  
Makoto made a face, but said nothing, feeling a strange warmth in her chest.  
  
The stranger smiled, gesturing to his scrolls.  
  
“Can I interest you in a quick ink painting? I would be honored to preserve this moment for you.”  
  
The man lifted his head to regard them, and Haru gasped. She flicked her gaze from the man’s milky white eyes to the long wooden cane resting against his shoulder.  
  
“You’re… blind,” Haru blinked.  
  
“It is not the eyes that see true art,” he said, serene.  
  
Haru whirled around, excitedly bouncing on her heels. “Oh, can we, Mako? Can we, can we?”  
  
A warm, weary fondness settled in Makoto’s chest. She was almost considering saying yes- until she caught a glimpse of sunlight on silver on the edge of her vision. Her grip tightened around Haru’s arm.  
  
“We have to go,” Makoto muttered, and all but dragged Haru away.    
  
The man shrugged, serene. Moments later, he heard the tromp of heavy boots in the snow, the rustling of mail hauberks, and voices muffled through death’s head masks. He gazed up at them with a practiced smile, smoothing a piece of fresh parchment across the board on his lap.  
  
“Good morning, officers,” he began. “Can I interest you in a print?”  
  
~*~  
  
Makoto ushered Haru into another swell of people bustling through the square, the shouts of barkers and food stand vendors almost, but not quite, drowning out Haru’s protests.  
  
“Oh! He seemed harmless enough!”  
  
“They always do, until they have one hand on a blade and the other around your purse,” Makoto muttered.  
  
“Oh, Mako…!” Haru huffed, pouting like only royalty could. “We should have gotten our picture taken! Do you have _any_ idea how much I love my wife?”  
  
“We’re really sticking with that charade, are we?” Makoto asked wearily.  
  
“The answer is ‘to bits’, and the world won’t _know that_ -” Haru shoved Makoto’s arm, Makoto barely feeling it through her armor. “-unless we capture the moment in ink!”  
  
“I’m sorry, _dear_ …” Makoto said, unable to keep a certain flutter out of her voice.  
  
The tide of bodies hustled them along. Haru clung to Makoto’s arm, staring in wonder at the stalls on the lane around them. Haru chirped in excitement about every vendor they walked past (“They make jewelry! Out of _wood_ ! How quaint!”) while Makoto patted Haru’s arm and sighed, content.  
  
“ _Laaaaaaadies, gentlemeeeeen, and eeeeeeveryone in between!_ ”  
  
They gazed up, blinking. There was a man perched atop one of the banner poles- a tiefling by his horns and pale purple complexion, the tails of his long coat splayed out behind him like wings.  
  
“Fine people of Larksnettle, allow me to present the crown jewel of today’s festivities! The Twin Lions theatre troupe is here in town, and believe me, we have a show for you! Come one, come all, and see swords and sorcery like you’ve never seen it before!”  
  
The barker leapt from the pole and landed with all the grace of a cat. He opened his arms, grinning a showman’s smile.  
  
“The show starts at noon bell! Tickets at the door! I’ll see you all there!”  
  
An excited murmur swept through the crowd. The crowd swelled and pushed onwards, leaving Haru gazing at their wake in wonder. Also watching the departing crowd was the barker, leaning against the banner pole, his arms folded across his chest.  
  
“Hello, ladies,” he sidled up, flashing a rakish smile. “Here for the show? I’ll bet you a purse of silver you’ve never seen authentic stage mages before.”  
  
Haru gasped, leaning in close. “Mages? Is that… _legal_ ?”  
  
“The Twin Lions don’t let Imperial law get in the way of a good show,” he winked, hunched over in a conspiratorial huddle. “And it really is a hell of a show- I’ll see you there, yes? Tickets start at just a few coppers… though if you’d rather hold onto your purse, I can give you a more _private_ show…”  
  
He took Haru’s hand and lifted it to his lips, while Haru giggled like a schoolgirl all the while. Makoto rolled her eyes in disgust.  
  
“If you’ll excuse us, _ser_ ,” Makoto cut in, “my _wife_ and I would like to enjoy the rest of the festival.”  
  
“Of course, of course,” he said, smiling at Makoto peaceably. He rapped his knuckles against a horn, as if to scold himself. “You’re going to make a homewrecker out of me. You’re a sweet couple, really. I’ll see you two at noon bell, then?”  
  
Makoto made a face. She glanced beside her, saw the look in Haru’s eyes, and relented.  
  
“...Yes,” she sighed.  
  
“I’ll save your tickets,” the barker grinned, as Haru squealed in delight and Makoto sighed and ushered her away.  
  
~*~  
  
Noon bell was fast approaching. The festival crowd was spilling into a makeshift auditorium erected in a field on the outskirts of the city, filing into bench seats made from rough-cut logs. Makoto and Haru filtered into the stands, carried along by the swell of the crowd. While Haru gaped at just about everything in sight, Makoto was keeping a watchful eye on the soldiers scattered throughout the crowd.  
  
The soldiers of Larksnettle Garrison weren’t exactly the Empire’s finest. Makoto knew it, and, for his part, their sergeant seemed to know it, too.  
  
He’d been so proud to be promoted to sergeant at such a young age. His own squad, his own garrison… then he’d mouthed off one too many times, and now he was stuck here, at a backwater posting where military careers went to die. He heard what the rest of the officer corps called him. A “soft touch”. A “bleeding heart”. He could only imagine what they’d say if they could see him allowing this festival to proceed as planned.  
  
Well, screw them. The Emperor had no wish to rule a graveyard. There was no harm in a bit of fun.  
  
“What do you think, huh?” He asked the trooper beside him, holding out a scroll of parchment.  
  
“It’s a fine picture, ser,” the trooper replied. “We ought to hang it up in the barrack hall.”  
  
“Oh, you really think so?” the sergeant frowned, tapping at his stylized skull faceplate. “I don’t know… we can’t really tell who’s who in this painting. I knew I should have taken my helmet off.”  
  
The sergeant shrugged, and tucked the scroll into the belt of his black velvet tabard. He gestured with his fingers, fanning his troop detail throughout the assembled crowd. One trooper lingered anxiously nearby, his spear tucked into the crook of his arm.  
  
“Sergeant. About the rumors…”  
  
“I wouldn’t worry too much about that.” He waved his hand dismissively. “Just enjoy the festival.”  
  
“Even so, sergeant. Do you really think we’ll find a rebel cell?”  
  
“No,” he said, and meant it. “Who would start an uprising in a backwater like this?”  
  
~*~  
  
“Sheesh, look at these rent-a-guards,” Ryuji said, peering out through the curtain at the Imperial garrison ringing their audience. “Who would stop an uprising in a backwater like this?”  
  
“Only the Emperor’s finest, obviously,” Ann grinned behind him. She raised her arms over her head and stretched, her stage outfit glittering crimson and gold.  
  
Ryuji clapped a hand on Ann’s shoulder. “You ready for this?”  
  
“Almost,” Ann said. Her earrings sparkled strangely in the dim light. “Akira?”  
  
~*~  
  
_“Akira? How are things at the gate?”_  
  
Akira leaned against a fencepost, spinning a knife in his hands. Eager theatregoers filed past, dropping coppers into the burlap sack at his feet. He grinned, watching the pile grow and grow.  
  
“We are gonna be packed today,” he grinned, his single pearl earring shimmering with magic. “Tickets are just flying outta my hands.”  
  
_“Three coppers for every butt in a seat,”_ Ann said, over linkpearl. _“Just like we agreed._ **_Right_ ** _, Akira?”_ _  
_  
Akira glanced at the wooden sign hanging above the sack, where a carved ‘3’ had somehow become ‘8’.  
  
“Oh, yeah,” Akira grinned, idly sharpening his knife against his horns. “Just like we agreed.”  
  
The noon bell rang across Larksnettle town square, and a hush fell over the crowd. The curtains parted, and smoke billowed out across the floor. Lightning flashed, illuminating a silhouette through the fog.  
  
A pillar of fire exploded up from the stage. It took shape in the sky over Larksnettle- a lion, crimson and gold, with a mane ablaze with light. The lion roared, before plunging back to earth in an surging wave of fire.  
  
“Welcome, everyone…!”  
  
Ann cried out to thunderous applause, emerging out of a blossom of fire, the magicked flames unfolding like petals around her feet. She strode out, clad in crimson and gold, flaxen hair shining like a crown, waving to her adoring fans. Behind her, her phantasmal lion let out another thunderous roar- Ryuji walked out of its mouth, embers trailing from his every step. The duo linked their hands and threw open their arms to the crowd.  
  
“We are Twin Lions Entertainment!” Ryuji cried out. “Welcome to today’s show! I’m Ryuji-”  
  
“-and I’m your favorite witch, Ann!” Ann squealed. “Let’s _start the fire!_ ”  
  
~*~  
  
Ann and Ryuji were stage magicians the likes of which Haru had never seen. Every move they made was utterly entrancing- from Ryuji swatting bolts of magical fire out of the air with nothing but a sword, to Ann twirling and dancing across the stage, trailing ribbons of fire from her hands.  
  
While Haru watched, utterly enraptured, Ann and Ryuji formed phantasms around themselves. Bolts of white lightning hung frozen in the air around Ryuji’s form, like skeletal trees in the middle of winter, while across the stage, flames coiled around Ann like silk. From one moment to another, they became lions- shining and dazzlingly lifelike constructs that moved as they moved, two puppeteers cocooned in a web of light in their lion’s hearts.  
  
They dueled, and they danced- each bite, each swipe of a claw throwing sparks and embers into the air. They spiraled up into the air, coiled in one another, until they exploded- and a second sun burst into bloom in the sky over Larksnettle.  
  
The explosion shook the air like a thunderclap and filled the air with dazzling light, revealing Ann and Ryuji together on the stage, arms wide, wreathed in white lightning and golden flames.  
  
“Thank you, Larksnettle!” They shouted to the crowd. “That’s all we have for today! We’ve been Twin Lions Entertainment! We’re here all week!”  
  
Ann and Ryuji linked hands. They bowed with a flourish, and the stage curtains swallowed them up.  
  
Haru squealed in delight and clung even tighter to Makoto’s arm. Makoto relented, reaching up and fondly laying a hand on Haru’s head.  
  
The crowd dispersed around them, chattering animatedly. Ann and Ryuji had left a parting gift in the air around them- their final firework exploding into shimmering butterflies of golden light, flitting throughout the crowd.  
  
Haru caught one in her cupped hands and held it out to Makoto, beaming. They held each other’s eyes, a warm moment blooming between them.  
  
Makoto wondered, wryly, if this was what marriage felt like.  
  
Haru gasped and stumbled forward into Makoto’s arms. She turned, and saw the barker from before, moving through the crowd.  
  
“Whoops! ‘Scuse me, ladies!” He grinned, hefting a sack of coppers over his shoulder. “Hope you enjoyed the show!”  
  
“We did!” Haru beamed up at Makoto. “We did, didn’t we, Mako…?”  
  
Makoto took Haru’s hand and squeezed. “Yes. We…”  
  
Makoto’s face fell. In an instant, her eyes were sharp, alert. “My lady, your ring.”  
  
“What? My…” Haru blinked, before turning and seeing the glint of her family crest disappearing into the barker’s coat pocket. She stabbed a finger towards him and shrieked.  
  
_“Thief!”_  
  
~*~  
  
“Oh, man, that closer always gives me such a rush,” Ann stretched, pacing backstage. She flashed Ryuji a teasing smile. “I could just about kiss you.”  
  
“Hey man, don’t make it weird.”  
  
They stiffened as a squad of Imperial guardsmen filed backstage- although they relaxed a little bit when they saw the sergeant leading them. Young, scrawny, less-than-imposing, even with the skull-face visor. Ann put her hands on her hips, looking them over.  
  
“...What seems to be the problem, officers? Did you enjoy the show?”  
  
“Oh, yes,” the sergeant nodded, and his troopers murmured in agreement. “It really was spectacular.”  
  
“We try,” Ryuji said, grinning.  
  
The sergeant wasn’t smiling. Not that they could tell, through the mask, but his voice didn’t share Ryuji’s levity.  
  
“I don’t need to remind you two that under Imperial law, military-grade magic is strictly forbidden…”  
  
“‘Military-grade’?” Ann scoffed. “Please, officer, we’re performers, not soldiers. A good stage magician doesn’t reveal her tricks, but I assure you- my brother and I are registered illusionists, licensed to perform for entertainment purposes only. I think you’ll find that our paperwork is in order.”  
  
“Very well,” the sergeant said, shifting uncomfortably. “If I could just take a look at your registration…”  
  
He was cut off by the bang of the stage door. Akira casually shouldered his way through the squad of soldiers and dropped his sack of coins at Ann’s feet. Ryuji whistled, while Ann shot him an irritated glare.  
  
The sergeant coughed. “Uh… your forms, miss…?”  
  
“Yeah, yeah, hold that thought,” Ann muttered, turning to Akira. “Hey! How were ticket sales, _Akira_ ?”  
  
“Uh, they went great. You can tell, by the, uh, big sack of money I just got us.”  
  
“I said ‘three coppers a ticket’!” Ann grumbled. “I heard about your stunt at the front door! How were you going to split eight coppers a ticket between the three of us?”  
  
“Uh… two, two, and four? My way?” Akira smiled.  
  
Ann glowered at him.  
  
“Alright, alright. Three, three, and I’ll settle for two,” Akira shrugged. He took a signet ring from his pocket, flicked it into the air, and caught it. “But this pretty little thing? This one’s mine.”  
  
The glint of the ring’s crest- a stylized letter ‘O’ within a four-pointed sunburst- stopped the room in its tracks.  
  
“Where did you get that?” Ryuji asked, eyes wide.  
  
“What?” Akira said, defensive. “I know it’s pretty and all, but it’s _mine_ , so-”  
  
“You idiot!” Ann hissed. “That’s the royal crest of Corona!”  
  
Akira smiled, eager. “...So it’ll fetch a good price, is what you’re saying?”  
  
_“THIEF!”_  
  
“Whoop! See ya!” Akira pocketed the crest and bolted. An instant later, an unfamiliar blur in a midnight blue cloak came speeding after him.  
  
“Collusion with the royal family!” The sergeant balked, scandalized. “I knew there was something fishy about you two! I knew it the instant I saw your hair!”  
  
“Oh for-” Ryuji rolled his eyes. “So great-grandpa or whoever was a royal and we came out blonde like him, what’s the big deal?”  
  
“Mages of a royal bloodline, flaunting Imperial law!” The sergeant scowled beneath his death’s head helm. “But no longer. We’ve finally caught you!”  
  
“Catch this, asshole!” Ann snapped.  
  
She pitched an orb of magic into the sergeant’s hands, and it exploded into a coruscating mass of light and color. He stumbled back, swatting aside ribbons of strobing light. Through the smoke and flashes of color, he saw Ann and Ryuji slipping away. He roared.  
  
“ _Get them!_ ”  
  
~*~  
  
Akira bolted down Larksnettle’s slushy streets, cackling like a hyena, Makoto hot on his heels. It would hardly be the first time he’s had an angry woman chasing him down the street. Credit where credit was due- she was pretty fast for someone in heavy armor. Still no match for a master, though.  
  
Akira ducked into an alley, peeking down the street behind him.  
  
“Lost her,” he grinned. He turned, and made for the opposite street.  
  
A mailed fist smashed him in the face and hurled him to the ground. He skipped across the sodden ground like a stone across a pond, coming to rest on his back. He gazed up at the cloudy sky, gingerly poking at his jaw.  
  
“...Ow…” he groaned, laying his head back in the snow. “Parkour.”  
  
A blade appeared at his throat. Makoto loomed over him.  
  
“You have something that doesn’t belong to you,” she said, her voice like ice.  
  
“See, what I’m getting from all this, is that this ring is _super_ valuable,” Akira said.  
  
Makoto snarled. “You little-”  
  
“Hey!”  
  
A bolt of sizzling arcane power shot down the alley. Makoto swatted it aside with the flat of her sword, and it exploded behind her, into ribbons of color and shimmering light. Ann appeared at the head of the alley, a rune still shimmering around her fingers, Ryuji at her side.  
  
“Hands off, sister!” Ann demanded. “That asshole owes me money!”  
  
“This isn’t about money!” Makoto snapped. “This petty thief-”  
  
“-works for us!” Ryuji cut in. “You don’t get to stab him until his contract’s up!”  
  
“Mako…!” Haru came running up, panting. Makoto pinched the bridge of her nose in frustration.  
  
“My lady, I _told_ you to wait for me at-”  
  
Haru squeaked in surprise as Ryuji came up behind her and got her into a chokehold. Makoto’s eyes flashed in anger.  
  
“Let her go!” she demanded.  
  
“Let _him_ go!” Ryuji shot back.  
  
“ _None_ of you are going _anywhere_ !”  
  
The sergeant barked, as a dozen Imperial troopers took up firing positions at the head of the alley, crossbows at the ready. The sergeant huffed, still out of breath from pursuing them on foot.  
  
“...I don’t know what’s going on, here…” he began. “But I see royals, and mages, neither of which the Emperor takes to too kindly. So you’re all going to come with me, and one of you is going to give me the answers I want, or you can all stand here and get filled with crossbow bolts.”  
  
“Hey!” Ann protested. “Let’s not get hasty, here!”  
  
“You don’t get to speak!” The sergeant snapped. “We know who _you_ are, witch! You’re the most wanted woman in the country! We know all about you, _Firestarter_ ! Now where’s the rest of your Rebel cell?!”  
  
Ann stared at him, incredulous.  
  
_“WHAT?!”_ Ann shrieked. “Time out. Time the fuck out!”  
  
Ann marched up to the sergeant, heedless of the dozen crossbows pointed her way. She snatched the scroll of parchment out of the sergeant’s belt and shook it out. She flipped it around, shoving it in the sergeant’s face.  
  
“This? This is your warrant?!” She snarled. “First of all, this doesn’t even look like me! You can’t even get my hair right! I’m a stage magician, not some- some _revolutionary!_ Who the hell do you think I am?!”  
  
“Liar!” The sergeant shot back. “You’re an illusionist! Your craft is deception! Who’s to say this circus act of yours isn’t some elaborate facade?”  
  
“Why, so we can hide in cellars, plotting to overthrow the Empire?” Akira asked, Makoto’s boot still pinning him to the ground. He scoffed. “There’s no money in that!”  
  
“Be quiet,” Makoto hissed.  
  
“Enough!” The sergeant snapped. “You are all under arrest!”  
  
“Let them pass in peace.”  
  
The wandering artist’s tranquil voice cut through the stand-off. He strode up the street, his cane held out before him, his eyes hidden by his wide-brimmed straw hat.  
  
“Let them pass in peace,” he echoed. He drew closer, and two troopers snapped their aim towards him.  
  
“Hold it,” a trooper said. “Stop right there, or we’ll shoot.”  
  
The artist stopped short. He lifted his head, and smiled.  
  
He shot forward in a blur, crossbow bolts zipping over his shoulders. There were two sharp cracks, and two troopers hit the ground.  
  
Light and color exploded through the ranks of troopers. Ryuji shoved Haru into Makoto’s arms and threw himself aside. Makoto pulled Haru into an embrace, gritting her teeth as crossbow bolts punched into her back, the troopers firing blind.  
  
The street devolved into a frenzy. The artist ducked and weaved through the chaotic melee, expertly jamming his cane into knees, elbows, faceplates. The sergeant shouted orders, fighting to be heard over the din. A bolt of dazzling magic hit him in the face, and he cried out, flailing.  
  
Ann had a split-second to be proud of herself before an armored fist closed around her hair and yanked. She screamed, dragged to her knees.  
  
“Ann!” Ryuji roared. He floored a trooper with a punch to the jaw, lightning trailing from his knuckles. Then the butt of a crossbow slammed into his thigh and he fell to one knee, cursing.  
  
“Akira!” Ann cried out.  
  
Akira hesitated, glancing between the empty street at the end of the alley, to Makoto sagging in Haru’s arms, to the mess waiting for him in the street. He sighed, and dug a hand into his pocket.  
  
“Take it!”  
  
He flicked the ring towards Haru and leapt into the fray, his dagger flashing in his hands.  
  
The artist bashed a trooper over the head with his cane, turned, and tried it again. The second trooper caught the cane in an armoured hand and yanked.  
  
The artist twisted his grip and drew a long, thin blade from the haft of his cane. He plunged the blade through the eye socket of the trooper’s death’s head mask. The trooper crumpled to his knees, and the artist withdrew the blade, flicking red onto the dirty snow.  
  
“Corona resists,” he spat.  
  
In the alley, Makoto took a few halting steps before sinking into Haru’s arms. She took a ragged gasp, her armor shivering with crossbow bolts.  
  
“Go,” Makoto gasped. Haru laid a hand on her cheek.  
  
“Not without you,” Haru whispered. She looked over Makoto’s shoulder. “Not without them.”  
  
Haru slipped her signet ring onto her finger. Makoto’s hand closed over hers.  
  
“You can’t,” Makoto breathed.  
  
“These are my people,” Haru said, resolute. “I will not look away.”  
  
The artist buckled as a trooper kicked his knees out from under him. He fell, his sword jarred from his grasp. He groped through the dirty snow, gasping as another trooper’s boot crunched into his ribs. Nearby, two troopers had Ann’s arms pinned. She screamed out savage curses, magic sparking at her fingertips but failing to catch. Ryuji called her name in impotent fury, on his knees in the snow, while Akira dueled fruitlessly with another trooper, his dagger scraping uselessly against the trooper’s mail.  
  
“ _Enough_ .”  
  
Haru’s voice rang through the air like a commandment, shivering like rolling thunder. The sunburst of the royal family shone like a torch around her finger. She reached up and pulled back her hood, her own hair shining gold.  
  
The troopers stopped and stared, Haru’s aura glinting gold on their death’s head masks.  
  
“You!” The sergeant sputtered. “You’re…!”  
  
“ _I am alive_ ,” Haru intoned.  
  
Haru opened her hands, and the entire street went ablaze with white light.  
  
~*~  
  
They regrouped in the woods outside the city. Haru helped Makoto down onto a tree stump, Makoto hissing with pain every inch of the way. The artist stood apart, aloof, sliding his sword back into his cane. Ann sat on a log with Ryuji, her dress in tatters, her chin in her hand. Akira shrugged off his coat and draped it over her shoulders without a word. Haru sat to herself, eyes downcast, her hands clasped in her lap.  
  
“Who are you?” Ann demanded.  
  
Haru took a deep breath and sighed.  
  
“...I am Haru Okumura. Princess of Corona, and heir to the throne.”  
  
“‘The Lost Princess’? ‘Princess of Light’?” Ann asked.  
  
Ryuji shook his head. “Princess Okumura died when the Empire kicked our teeth in a year ago.”  
  
“No,” Makoto spoke up. “The Raven Guard, protectors of the throne, smuggled her out of the capital and into hiding.”  
  
“It was a costly escape,” Haru said, a shadow passing over her eyes. “Captain Niijima is the last of the Raven Guard. She is all I have left. I must find her a healer, one loyal to the throne.”  
  
“My lady.”  
  
The artist stepped forward, and bowed his head.  
  
“I am no healer. But I can bring you to one. It is an honor to finally meet you, your highness. My name is Yusuke... well. Among the common folk, I am called ‘Yusuke’...” He swallowed hard. “But among the Rebellion, I am ‘The Fox’.”  
  
“Well, thanks for costing us a good gig, Fox!” Ann snapped. “Unlike you revolutionaries, _I_ don’t have a deathwish! _I’m_ just trying to make an honest living! But we’re probably blacklisted by the Empire after this fiasco! At best, we’ll never find work again. At worst, you’ve made us fugitives!”  
  
“C’mon, Ann!” Ryuji said, bumping an elbow against hers. “Maybe this is what we’ve been waiting for. This is our chance to strike back against the Empire!”  
  
Akira scoffed. “That doesn’t sound very profitable.”  
  
“If you cannot find work among the people,” Haru began, “then you can work for me.”  
  
“What are you, crazy?” Ann stared at her. “You’re asking us to die. You’re asking us to fight the Empire!”  
  
“I’m asking you to _elude_ the Empire,” Haru urged. “The Rebellion is out there. Corona resists. I seek to find these isolated rebel cells and rally them together. Together, we are strong! Strong enough to push the Empire back out of our lands!”  
  
Silence. Haru took a deep breath and sighed.  
  
“...I do not ask you to do this on principle alone,” Haru said. “Escort me through occupied territory. Help me gather the resistance together. Do this for me, and I promise you a queen’s ransom in return.”  
  
Akira whistled, long and low. He dropped down beside Ann, bumping his shoulder against hers.  
  
“What do you say, eh, primadonna?” Akira grinned. “There are worse gigs than getting in good with the future queen…”  
  
Ann blew out a sigh, blowing a stray lock of hair out of her eyes. She flashed her partners a daring grin.  
  
“Oh, what the hell. Deal. But we’re gonna split this bounty three ways- thirty, thirty, and forty. My way.”  
  
Ann, Ryuji and Akira exchanged high-fives, while Makoto just shook her head.  
  
“Entertainers,” Makoto muttered, rolling her eyes.  
  
"Now, there's a Rebel healer just a few hours away..." Yusuke began.  
  
“Hold on. There’s an apothecary right here in Larksnettle,” Akira said. “Nice lady. No friend of the Empire. She makes my, uhhh, _medicine_ .”  
  
‘ _Medicine_ ,’ Ryuji mouthed, making quotes with his fingers.  
  
“She should get your knight in shining armor back on her feet,” Akira continued.  
  
“Excellent. I thank you,” Haru bowed her head. “Ser Fox. Where can I make contact with the nearest Rebel cell?”  
  
“Hawk’s Landing,” Yusuke replied. “On the banks of the river Hyperion. Not the largest cell around, not by any means.”  
  
“It’s a start,” Haru said, and smiled. “Let’s get to work.”  
  
~*~  
  
The riding crop slapped into a leather-gloved palm, and the young Imperial sergeant snapped to attention, sweating inside his death’s head helm.  
  
“...You would not lie to me, would you, sergeant?” The woman asked, pacing in front of him, her long, dark coat dusting the floorboards as she walked. “I do so hate liars.”  
  
“No, ma’am,” the sergeant said, fixing his gaze straight ahead. “Of course, ma’am.”  
  
“Take off your helm, sergeant. I want to see the truth in your eyes.”  
  
The sergeant swallowed hard. He pulled off his helm and braced it against his hip. Again, he fixed his gaze straight ahead.  
  
“Look at me.”  
  
She grabbed him by the collar and yanked him forward so she could look him in the eye. She was a halfling, more than a head shorter than he, and yet she radiated a dreadful authority. She reached up, tucking a lock of carrot-red hair behind her ear.  
  
“You’re certain of this…?”  
  
He nodded.  
  
“...Yes, ma’am. She bore the royal seal, and could wield the light, not to mention her hair, her eyes… There can be no mistake. Princess Okumura is alive.”  
  
“Hm.” She let go of his collar and paced, slapping the haft of her riding crop into her palm. She stopped, and glanced at him over her shoulder.  
  
“Sergeant Nishima.”  
  
“Th-That’s, uh, ‘Mishima’, ma’am.”  
  
“Like it matters,” she scoffed, flipping her hair. “Gather your troops. We’re going hunting.”  
  
“At once, ma’am.”  
  
The Inquisitor gazed out at the snowy wilderness, and at the pale, fitful sun sinking beneath the trees, scarcely strong enough to peek through the clouds. She turned, and clapped a hand over her heart.  
  
“ _Ave Umbra_ ,” she declared.  
  
Mishima snapped off a salute.  
  
_“We welcome the night.”_ _  
_ _  
_ ~*~  
  
“And so, our ragtag group of adventurers set off to free Corona from the grasp of the evil Umbra Empire, and to restore Haru Okumura, Princess of Light, to her rightful throne…!”  
  
Futaba pounded her fists on the table, rattling the dice scattered about.    
  
“And that’s it for tonight!” she announced.  
  
The dining table at the Sakura household buzzed with excited chattering as the session came to a close. Futaba reached above her head and stretched, before Akira obligingly put her favorite bunny pillow down on the table and Futaba fell face-first into it. Akira fondly laid a hand in her hair.  
  
“That wasn’t half bad for your first time,” Akira said, smiling.  
  
“You did great, Futaba-chan!” Haru cooed.  
  
“Agreed,” Makoto said, shrugging on her coat. “...Unfortunately, we do need to catch the last train… so! Same time, next week?”  
  
“This was super cool, you guys!” Mishima beamed, running a hand through his hair. “Thanks for having me over! And, uh, sorry I forgot the soda…”  
  
“Yo, Yusuke!” Ryuji called out, an arm casually draped around Ann’s shoulder. “Your entrance into that fight was fuckin’ sick. Y’know, it actually felt kinda familiar…”  
  
“Ah, yes, of course!” Yusuke preened, a hand against his chest. “You will have no doubt heard of Zatoichi, the blind swordsman who hid his sword in his cane…”  
  
“Actually, I was thinking of that scene in Rogue One,” Ryuji admitted.  
  
“He’s saying you’re Donnie Yen,” Ann chimed in.  
  
Yusuke stared at them. His eye twitched. “...I do not know who that is.”  
  
“Yusuke doesn’t watch movies,” Akira said. “He still hasn’t even seen The Notebook.”  
  
“Still?!” Makoto laughed.  
  
“Okay!” Futaba abruptly sprang up from her pillow and flapped her arms. “I just had to talk for three hours straight and I’m socially exhausted now so I love all of you but please get out of my house!”  
  
“Alright, alright,” Haru laughed, though her smile faded when she saw the time. “Oh! Mako, the train!”  
  
“Man, I don’t wanna get up,” Ryuji said. “Hey, can Ann and I just crash here tonight?”  
  
“I dunno. Ask Sojiro.”  
  
“Hey, Pops!” Ryuji yelled. “Can Ann and I stay here tonight?”  
  
“Don’t call me ‘Pops’!” Sojiro voice drifted downstairs. “And fine. But if you get up to any funny business, you better take it next door to Leblanc’s attic!”  
  
There was a chorus of goodbyes and see-you-soons as Makoto, Haru, Yusuke and Mishima filed out the door, while Ryuji and Ann retreated into the living room to cuddle/playfight on the couch and ransack the Sakura family’s DVDs.  
  
Akira stayed in the dining room, gathering up character sheets and references into a big binder. Futaba mumbled sleepily into her bunny pillow, only vaguely aware of dice rattling across the table as Akira swept them into drawstring bags.  
  
_“Taba? Are you still there?”_  
  
Futaba groggily lifted her head and smiled, unbidden, into her webcam.  
  
“Hey, Kana. I’m gonna… pass out in a bit, so… Did you have fun?”  
  
_“I did. Hopefully next week I can make it to Tokyo and see it all in person.”_  
  
“I’ll see you then,” Futaba murmured.  
  
“Good night, player one,” Kana cooed.  
  
“Good night, player two,” Futaba purred back, before reaching out and pulling her laptop closed. She put her face back in her bunny pillow with a sigh, squeaking as Akira put a hand in her hair.  
  
“Sleepy?” Akira asked.  
  
“Mm.”  
  
“You should sleep in your bed, at least.”  
  
“Too far,” Futaba mumbled. “Carry me?”  
  
“You’re unbelievable,” Akira rolled his eyes. He scooped Futaba into his arms, and lifted her out of her seat.  
  
“So,” Akira said. “I’m gonna call our first ever Tabletop Tuesday a success. Are you ready for next week?”  
  
Futaba chuckled impishly, pushing her glasses up on her nose.  
  
“I think the question you should be asking is… are you ready for _me_ ?”  
  
~*~


	2. Why Are There Always Giant Spiders

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "There are loose ends to tie up in Larksnettle before your adventure can begin in earnest. You seek out the services of an apothecary, and meet some familiar faces along the way..."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back to Phantoms and Fantasies! This one goes out to Alexilulu, and my newest underdog OTP. Enjoy!

~*~  
  
The woman at the counter whirled around at the sound of chimes above the front door, the dark curls of her hair bouncing, her smile bright and warm.  
  
“Welcome to Tutors and Tonics! What can I get for… oh. It’s _you_ .”  
  
Akira smiled sheepishly, one hand in his pocket, the other scratching idly at a horn.  
  
“H-Hey, buddy!” He grinned. “Everybody, say hi to my pal Kamilla, although her friends call her ‘Kami’...”  
  
Kami rolled her eyes. “You’re not my friend.”  
  
“That’s cold, Kami.”  
  
Kami sighed. She put her hands on her hips and watched as the ragtag group filed in- the gaudily dressed performers of Twin Lions Entertainment, Ann and Ryuji; some sort of vagabond artist with ink-stained fingers; and then the last two, two women, one in crimson, the other in midnight-blue, looking regal and sorely out of place in a city like Larksnettle.  
  
The whole group looked like they’d fallen down a hill and hit a few rocks on the way down- but at the sight of crossbow bolts embedded in Makoto’s armor, Kami darted forward, giving her another shoulder to lean on.  
  
“Pardon the intrusion, ma’am,” Makoto said through gritted teeth, as Kami and Haru eased her down onto a wooden bench beside shelves of herbs and potions.  
  
“Oh, dear…” Kami sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. She glowered up at Akira, shaking her head. “...what kind of trouble have you gotten yourself into?”  
  
~*~  
  
Haru watched as a patrol of Imperial guardsmen trotted past on the street below. She frowned, pulling the curtain closed.  
  
Makoto was sitting on a cot, stripped to the waist, hissing as Kami pressed another poultice to her back and tied it off with a linen bandage. Makoto’s armor saved her life, but she was hardly unscathed. Haru watched as Kami worked, biting her lip at the sight of the bloody constellation the bolts had left across Makoto’s back.  
  
Haru took a deep breath and sighed.  
  
“...I’m sorry,” she murmured, briefly meeting Kami’s eyes. “By coming here, I’ve put you in great danger.”  
  
“Don’t apologize,” Kami said. “It isn’t often a member of the royal family shows up on my doorstep, needing my help. But I’d be careful, wearing that ring. That crest doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone, out here.”  
  
Haru nodded. She slipped her signet ring off her finger and tucked it into her pocket.  
  
“Thank you for your hospitality,” Makoto said, wincing as Kami tied off another bandage. “You’ve been very kind.”  
  
“Shame about your armor,” Kami nodded to Makoto’s breastplate, where the punctured plate was marked by blossoms of ragged metal, “but better that than your innards, right?”  
  
“Indeed,” Makoto bowed her head in gratitude. “Thank you, doctor.”  
  
“Oh, I’m not the doctor,” Kami said, pulling off her gloves. “I know a few things, but really, I just run the shop. You’re looking for my business partner, Kemi.”  
  
“You know, I’ve always wondered-” Ryuji burst in, oblivious, while Makoto glowered and pulled her tunic back on. “You and Kemi. Are you two partners, or, like, _partners_ ?”  
  
“I _hardly_ see how that’s any of your business,” Kami snapped.  
  
“ _That’s_ a yes,” Ann grinned.  
  
Kami rolled her eyes. “Moving on… your friend’s armor here took the worst of it, but shallow or not, you still shouldn’t be going around with half a dozen punctures in your back. You’re welcome to stay here until you find your feet again. That way, I can keep an eye on your recovery and change your dressings every couple hours.”  
  
“Time out,” Akira cut in. “I dunno if you’ve seen the hornet’s nest buzzing around out there, but we’re kinda on the clock.”  
  
“What, you want some kind of miracle cure that will seal your wounds in an instant?” Kami scoffed. “Talk to Kemi, if you like. If anyone can do it, she can.”  
  
“Where is she?” Haru asked.  
  
“She’s not home,” Kami shrugged. “It was a slow day in the store, since everybody’s off at the festival. She went off to get some more potion ingredients.”  
  
“I thought you grew your own herbs?” Akira asked.  
  
“I do, and the garden’s out back,” Kami nodded. “But the best ingredients don’t grow just anywhere. If you want to find Kemi, she’ll be picking mushrooms in Aranea Caverns.”  
  
Ann blanched. “Ugh. I don’t like the sound of _that_ place.”  
  
~*~  
  
“Ser? I don’t like the sound of this place,” a trooper said, gazing into the shadows of the cavern mouth. Distant clacking and chittering echoed ominously down the stone walls, escaping into the Larksnettle fog like the sigh of the dead.  
  
“We can’t be intimidated by a little darkness and some tight spaces,” Sergeant Mishima flipped up his skull visor and flashed his comrade a daring grin. “We are the Emperor’s finest!”  
  
“ _Are_ we?”  
  
Mishima huffed. “Alright, Kaoru. See, attitude like that? It’s bad for morale.”  
  
Trooper Kaoru shrugged. Mishima turned to the rest of his assembled squad, most of them still flicking soot from their armor and blinking the stars from their eyes from when the Princess of Light had eluded them earlier that afternoon.  
  
“Alright, listen up!” Mishima called out. “Our objective is the capture of Princess Okumura. We believe that she has gone to ground with a local Rebel cell. These caverns have been reported as popular hideouts for thieves, smugglers, and assorted lowlifes- so it makes sense that the Rebellion might be hiding here, too. Do whatever you like with her companions, but Princess Okumura _must_ be taken alive! Understood?”  
  
“Yes, ser!”  
  
“Move out!”  
  
The squad saluted, before beginning their trek into Aranea caverns, crossbows at the ready. Trooper Kaoru fell into step with Mishima at the rear of the column, bearing a lantern on a pole. Their footsteps echoed strangely around them, mingling with that distant chittering and a slick, sinister scraping.  
  
“...I have a bad feeling about this…” Kaoru muttered.  
  
“I do, too,” Mishima admitted. “But the Inquisitor’s orders were clear, and I, for one, would rather not get on her bad side.”  
  
“She’s a halfling, ser. Seems she’s all bad side.”  
  
Mishima snorted. “Don’t go spreading that around.”  
  
“Morale?”  
  
“Morale.”  
  
The Imperial squad disappeared into the cavern mouth. Peeking over the lip of a nearby rocky outcropping was Akira, eavesdropping, with Yusuke close behind.  
  
“Shit,” Akira muttered, dismayed. “Do you see that?”  
  
“No,” Yusuke said flatly.  
  
Akira made a face. “...There’s an Imperial goon squad heading into the caverns. We need to get in there and find Kemi before they get their hands on her. We grab her, she does the whole ‘how can I ever repay you heroes’ thing, we get a healing potion to get Captain Hardass back on her feet, and then we. Are. Outtie.”  
  
Yusuke smiled, serene. “It would seem our task shall be rather more exciting than that of your companions.”  
  
“Typical,” Akira rolled his eyes. “Ann and Ryuji get to go after a big sack of money- that I collected, thank you- and what do I get? A trip to the spider cave.”  
  
~*~  
  
After their very loud and very public confrontation in the middle of town, the Imperial garrison decided to put the Twin Lions stage under lockdown… which really just meant the Imperial guardsmen not on ‘spider cave’ duty were just lounging around in the stands.  
  
Two guardsmen were standing watch at the outer gate, leaning on the squat wooden fence. A shimmering golden butterfly flitted in front of a guard’s face. He chuckled, waving it away.  
  
The butterfly perched on the guard’s visor, shining with an otherworldly light.  
  
Then it exploded in a flash of light and color.  
  
The guard dropped to the ground in a daze. His partner started forward, only for a fist to thunk into his helmet. He fell to the ground in a crumpled heap.  
  
Ryuji dumped the two unconscious guards in a stand of tall grass, where Ann was waiting for him. Ann plucked a helmet off one of the guard’s heads and grinned, flicking soot off the visor.  
  
“The ol’ razzle dazzle,” Ann said, pulling the helmet over her head.  
  
“Hey, can we trade helmets?” Ryuji asked. “This one’s got a dent in it.”  
  
“So does your head.”  
  
“Fuck off,” Ryuji smiled. He shrugged a fallen guard’s mail coat over his head and shook out the links, the faulds settling over his knees. He popped the helmet on, flipped down the skull visor, and just like that, he was just another grunt trooper in the Umbra Empire- just like Ann.  
  
“How do I look?” Ann asked, her voice muffled by her mask.  
  
“Like a dirty Imperial,” Ryuji grinned. “I could just about punch you.”  
  
Ann flipped up her visor and flashed him a teasing smile. “How about now?”  
  
Ryuji grinned. “Yeah, still.”  
  
Ann rolled her eyes. “Hate you.”  
  
“Bite me.”  
  
They snaked their way through the stands, nodding greetings to their ‘fellow’ soldiers, making their way to the alcove backstage. Security was… astonishingly lax. Granted, these troops had drawn the easy duty of guarding an empty outdoor theater space. But all it took was a pair of ill-fitting disguises to let Ann and Ryuji walk right in.  
  
Their take from the noon performance was sitting right where they’d left it- sitting on the floorboards where Akira had dumped them. Ryuji helped himself to a trooper’s backpack, and stuffed the bag of coppers inside, strapping it in tight so it wouldn’t jingle as much when he walked. He shrugged the pack onto his shoulders, and he and Ann walked right back out, amazed at their good fortune.  
  
“That was… weirdly easy,” Ryuji said, as they made their way back to Kami’s shop.  
  
“Yeah,” Ann mused, smiling. “It’s almost like we were supposed to go to the spider caves with Akira and Yusuke, and nobody expected us to go back to the theater grounds.”  
  
{“Yeah, I wonder why,” Futaba grumbled, worlds away.)  
  
“Well, at least now we’re not gonna be broke going into this trip,” Ryuji said, adjusting the pack on his shoulders. He blew out a breath. “...Man. Soon as we get back to Kami’s, I’m getting out of this thing. This shit’s too tight.”  
  
“It’s always so hard to find stuff that fits you,” Ann said.  
  
“It must be this incredible half-orc physique,” Ryuji teased, flexing a bicep.  
  
“I’m a half-orc too, you moron.”  
  
“Nuh-uh. You’re a half-elf.”  
  
“Our parents were an orc and an elf!” Ann rolled her eyes, punching Ryuji in the arm. “ _You_ just got all your looks from Mom.”  
  
Ryuji grinned, and punched Ann back.  
  
“Alright, that’s this taken care of. Wonder how Akira’s doing.”  
  
~*~  
  
Just outside town, Sergeant Mishima led his squad through the winding tunnels of Aranea Caverns. They cast long, eerie shadows in the bobbing lamplight. Things chittered and clicked in the darkness, fleeing into shadowed alcoves when the glow of a lantern got too near.  
  
The walls glittered with the wealth of the earth. Precious gems caught the lamplight and sparkled… like eyes in the dark. Trooper Kaoru swallowed hard, clutching his lamp pole just a little too tightly.  
  
“What is that?” Kaoru asked, nodding to the glint in the walls.  
  
“Magicite,” Mishima answered. “Apparently, outside the Empire, people use magically-imbued stones for all sorts of things. Keep a chunk of ice magicite in your larder to keep in cool, plant a piece of earth magicite to ensure a good harvest, hang wind magicite in your window to conjure a breeze…”  
  
“That sounds handy.”  
  
“That sounds easy,” Mishima muttered, scornful. “The Empire never needed enchanted rocks. We know how to make things for ourselves.”  
  
The squad continued down the tunnel, following the trail of a long-abandoned mining track. They shimmied past a minecart sitting empty, gathering dust. All around them, the chittering and clacking continued without cease.  
  
“If it’s so useful,” Kaoru began, “why did they stop mining?”  
  
“Rumor says that there’s something in these mines,” Mishima began, Kaoru’s lantern casting his misshapen shadow across the stone wall. “The miners delved too greedily and too deep… and in the shadowed depths, they unearthed something more horrible than we could ever imagine.”  
  
“Was it spiders, then?” Kaoru asked, a little too quickly. “Is that why they called this place ‘Aranea Caverns’?”  
  
“They called it that because of the spiderweb of criss-crossing tunnels,” Mishima said firmly. “At any rate, I’m not interested in ghost stories. Our target here is much more substantial than that.”  
  
“The princess,” Kaoru said.  
  
“The princess,” Mishima nodded. “And her Rebel allies. The Inquisitor believes that the princess and her retinue will attempt to make contact with Rebel forces in the area. Imperial Intelligence believes that a certain Rebel benefactor is hiding in these caverns.”  
  
“Who?”  
  
“A witch,” Mishima said. “A master of poisons. They call her The Plague.”  
  
Kaoru went very still, his eyes wide behind his skull mask.  
  
“Ser…”  
  
“Of course, I’m not going to be intimidated by some Rebel propaganda.”  
  
“Ser…”  
  
Mishima sighed and turned to Kaoru.  
  
“ _What_ , trooper?”  
  
Kaoru pointed. Mishima turned, and saw the shadow moving in the flickering lamplight, caught a glimpse of wriggling limbs and sleek chitin…  
  
...and an octet of golden, inhuman eyes, gazing at him from the darkness.  
  
Mishima swallowed. His voice got very, very small.  
  
“...Oh.”  
  
~*~  
  
Elsewhere in Aranea Caverns, Akira and Yusuke were picking their way along the rocky path. Insect clicking and chittering followed their every footstep. Akira gazed up at the walls, anxious, idly scratching at a horn with his dagger.  
  
“Man, this place is a maze,” Akira muttered. “Too bad we’re looking for a person, not a place. Otherwise, I could show off my impeccable sense of direction.”  
  
Yusuke smiled. “Has your impeccable sense of direction brought you any closer to what you seek?”  
  
“You’re really going for that whole ‘mystical monk’ thing, huh?” Akira teased. “Look, I don’t know a non-asshole way to ask this, but you’re blind, yeah? How can you see where you’re going?”  
  
“It is not the eyes that see the truth,” Yusuke said, serene.  
  
Akira rolled his non-truth-seeing eyes. “Whatever you say.”  
  
“The River flows in all things,” Yusuke continued. “I do not fight the current, nor am I carelessly swept away. The River flows where it will, and the light of life glimmers in the stream. The River is the true beauty of this world. Honestly, I wish you could see it as I do.”  
  
Akira turned, fixing Yusuke with his stormy-gray eyes. They brought no lanterns to announce their presence- Yusuke was following his River, while Akira could naturally see in the dark. Still, the walls glittered with buried wealth. Akira thoughtfully tapped the flat of his dagger against his chin, eyes flicking from the glint in the stone to the markings etched into the wooden haft of Yusuke’s cane.  
  
Akira blinked.  
  
“...You’re a Mage. Or sort of one, anyway. You can sense the magicite in the walls around us,” Akira smiled in realization. “I bet you have magicite in your ink. Grind it into a powder, mix it in… yeah, yeah…! The Rebels have you passing missives around, disguised as your ‘paintings’. Hiding messages is as easy as switching between inks, and any Rebel mage can sense whenever a message has been intercepted or tampered with. And! The Empire has no mages! All they’ll ever see is an ordinary ink painting! Ha!”  
  
Yusuke smiled, amused. “...Clever.”  
  
Akira grinned, smug. “Don’t go falling in love with me, now. That doesn’t always work out.”  
  
Yusuke lifted his head, and met Akira’s eyes.  
  
“What happened to her?”  
  
The mirth left Akira’s face in an instant.  
  
“...We’re not talking about this,” Akira said, his voice cold.  
  
“I see I’ve touched a nerve,” Yusuke said, his serene smile never leaving his lips.  
  
Akira sighed, and shook his head.  
  
“Spies,” he muttered.  
  
A horrid scream shivered down the cavern halls. Akira froze, glancing up, biting back the rising tremor of anxiety in his chest. Yusuke stopped short, and sighed, gripping his cane with both hands. The air rang with shouts of alarm and the shrill whistling of crossbow bolts. Distant lamplight flickered like lightning over the horizon.  
  
Akira grimaced, tightening his grip on his dagger.  
  
“I guess we found that Imperial patrol,” Akira muttered.  
  
“Indeed,” Yusuke said, drawing his sword with a click. “Your sense of direction is impeccable.”  
  
~*~  
  
An ominous wind blew in through Kami’s open window, ruffling the curtains. Haru peered outside, past the second floor balcony, to the hills in the distance. She heard a sigh beside her, and she turned to Makoto, sitting up in bed. Haru’s gaze wandered appreciatively over Makoto’s physique, taut beneath her tunic… and then flickered guiltily at the sight of the bandages peeking out from the fabric.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Haru murmured, moving away from the window. “I imagine you’d rather be out there, on the frontlines, rather than us sending others on our behalf.”  
  
“No,” Makoto shook her head. “My place is here, with you, your highness. Now, and always.”  
  
“The last knight of Corona…” Haru extended her hand. “You honor me.”  
  
Makoto took her hand, brushing a thumb against the space on Haru’s finger where the royal crest would have sat.  
  
“My lady,” Makoto breathed, pressing a kiss to Haru’s knuckles. Haru reached forward, unbidden, and traced a finger along the line of Makoto’s jaw. Haru smiled bright.  
  
“I’m so glad I asked you to marry me.”  
  
Makoto laughed, despite everything.  
  
“We’re still playing that game, are we?”  
  
“Why? You don’t think we make a convincing couple?” Haru teased.  
  
Makoto smiled, warm. Their eyes met for a long, tender moment.  
  
“...I… hope I’m not interrupting,” Kami muttered as she crested the stairs, two mugs of hot tea in hand.  
  
“Oh, not at all!” Haru chirped. “Thank you!”  
  
Haru gratefully took one offered mug, while Makoto took the other. Haru promptly burned her lips on her tea. She squeaked in pain, while Makoto just shook her head, amused. Makoto turned to Kami.  
  
“Miss, a question. Your sign said ‘Tutors and Tonics’. Do you teach?”  
  
“I did,” Kami shrugged. “Then the Empire moved in, and suddenly, nobody has time to learn their letters anymore. Now I just help Kemi run the shop, keep the books. That sort of thing. Guess you ought to be glad- I’m not spilling any more of your secrets.”  
  
“Not at all!” Haru cut in. “Literacy belongs to us all, not just the nobility. Language opens borders, and ties us to our fellow man. Without it, we are isolated villages, with news traveling only by the rumors of traveling merchants. But together… together, we could reclaim the kingdom!”  
  
“That’s a nice _ideal_ , your highness,” Kami said, weary, but not unkind. “But with the Empire breathing down our necks, most folks are too busy just trying to get by.”  
  
A skull mask appeared in the window.  
  
“Yeah- Ow!” Ann cried out, pulling off her helmet. “It’s me!”  
  
“Sorry…” Kami said, sheepish, shaking out her stinging knuckles. “You looked like an Imperial.”  
  
“Told you,” Ryuji muttered behind her.  
  
“I didn’t even hear you on the balcony,” Haru said, watching as Ann slipped nimbly in through the window. “How did you get up there?”  
  
“It must be my natural half-elven grace and poise,” Ann preened. She winced as Ryuji half-tripped over the windowsill and thudded face-first onto the floor, his pack jingling with coins. Ann rolled her eyes. “I get it from Dad.”  
  
Ryuji sprang up, dusting himself off. “Where’s Akira and the new guy? They’re not back yet?”  
  
“No,” Makoto murmured, wary. “And the longer we stay, the greater the risk of-”  
  
They froze, as a fist banged against the door downstairs.  
  
“In the name of the Umbra Empire! Open this door!”  
  
The group exchanged anxious looks.  
  
“Great,” Kami breathed, trailing her fingers through her hair. “ _This_ we need…”  
  
~*~  
  
The tunnels led out into a large, open atrium, criss-crossed with looping tracks for mine carts and sheer drops into a vast nothing. A large, central platform radiated rail tracks in eight directions like the spokes of a wheel. Thick, sticky ropes of material hung suspended in the air, festooning every surface like the rigging of a ship. The remnants of the Imperial patrol were cocooned in spiderwebs, webbed up like a clutch of eggs on the central platform, entombed in their armor.  
  
Akira crept along a rocky outcropping, his dagger at the ready. He cringed with distaste at the Imperials trapped on the platform, cocooned in spider silk.  
  
“Ugh,” Akira muttered, squinting at a length of spiderweb he’d curled around his blade. “I don’t know if you can see this, but, uh. It’s not great.”  
  
“So I had gathered,” Yusuke replied.  
  
“At least we’ve got it better than these guys,” Akira muttered. He cut the spiderwebs away from a trooper’s faceplate while the trooper squirmed and struggled, to no avail. “Hey, buddy. You seen a lady named Kemi? She’s about this tall, wears a lot of black, probably carrying a sack full of glowing mushrooms or whatever?”  
  
“The Plague!” Mishima spat. “I knew you were working with her, Rebel scum! I’ll never talk-”  
  
“Okay, so much for diplomacy,” Akira said. He spun his knife in his hands.  
  
A shadow flickered across Yusuke’s senses.  
  
“Akira!” he called.  
  
Akira looked up. He jerked aside as a sticky gob of spider silk shot past him and into Mishima’s face, pinning his helmet back against the rock wall he was leaning against.  
  
A huge shadow, the size of a carriage, loomed in the darkness behind him, gazing at him with an octet of baleful orange eyes. It chittered, a rumbling purr that echoed eerily through the cavern.  
  
Akira grit his teeth. He darted forward, ducking under gobs of spider silk that went sailing over his shoulders. One gob smacked into his legs like a pair of thrown bolas, and Akira tumbled to the ground with a curse, his dagger skittering from his hands.  
  
The spider rolled him over onto his back with slick, chitinous limbs the width of tree trunks. It shrieked in Akira’s face. Akira just spat and gave it the finger.  
  
There was a flash of singing metal, and one of the spider’s forelimbs went flying in a spray of dark ichor.  
  
Yusuke rose to meet the beast, turning aside a swiping limb with a disdainful flick of his sword. He clacked his sheath against the ground and slid Akira’s dagger back into his grip. Akira reached down and cut the silk from his ankles, scrambling to his feet.  
  
The spider lunged forward into a bite. Yusuke stabbed it through the roof of its mouth, impaling it with its own momentum. The spider shrieked and snapped its mandibles uselessly, gagging on the blade transfixing its face.  
  
Akira darted around a flailing spider leg, took a running jump and threw himself into the air with all the grace of a cat. He planted his heels on the spider’s carapace, spun his dagger so his thumb was behind the grip, and punched it down.  
  
Akira’s dagger squealed off the beast’s armored exoskeleton like wet glass and Akira swore, fighting to keep his grip on the spider’s back. The spider hissed and pushed forward. Yusuke’s sword vanished into its face up to the hilt, and Yusuke fell to his knees, straining, bladed mandibles twitching towards his face.    
  
“Embrace the River!” Yusuke cried through gritted teeth. “Let it flow!”  
  
Akira would have scoffed, but it’s not like he had any better ideas. He closed his eyes, and let instinct guide his hand. He lifted his dagger high, and then plunged it down.  
  
Akira’s blade crunched into a soft spot in the spider’s exoskeleton, foul-smelling ichor oozing out through the wound. Akira withdrew the blade and stabbed again, and again, cracking open the shell further and further, making a mess of the soft tissue beneath.  
  
Yusuke got two hands around his sword and wrenched it out of the beast’s mouth. The spider shuddered, reeling. Akira hopped off of the spider’s back and landed in a crouch on the platform, as the spider’s oozing carcass slid off the platform and into the abyss.  
  
Akira and Yusuke exchanged glances. Yusuke nodded in approval.  
  
“Could you feel the River within you?” he asked.  
  
“I could feel myself getting damn lucky,” Akira shrugged.  
  
Shadows moved in the darkness around them, and they tensed, readying their weapons. A trio of silhouettes descended on ropes of spun silk, with more lurking in the distance, climbing across the walls.  
  
“‘Lucky’,” Yusuke said flatly.  
  
Akira blew his hair out of his face with an irritated sigh.  
  
“You know what, buddy…?”  
  
Shadows stepped out of the dark and became spiders, glowering with octets of shining golden eyes. They were surrounded- a spider to their left, a spider to their right, each the size of a horse-drawn carriage. But, most eerily, there was a third silhouette right in front of them- smaller. Slimmer.  
  
A woman, her eyes shining gold, three smaller eyes glinting from each eyebrow like piercings catching the light. She strode forward, an open white traveling robe dusting the ground as she walked, four sleek, spiny spider limbs arching out behind her- one pair emerging from her hips like the ribs of a ballgown, the other from her shoulders like skeletal wings. She smiled an eerie smile, her bioluminescent eyes shining in the dark.  
  
“Hello, Akira,” Kemi cooed. “Do you have an appointment?”  
  
~*~  
  
The door to Kami and Kemi’s Tutors and Tonics flew open and smashed against the wall, a broken chain trailing from the latch. Half a dozen brutes in the mail coats and skull helms of the Imperial Guard strode in and stood at attention in facing rows.  
  
A woman stalked into the store, her long leather officer’s coat flaring behind her. She carried a riding crop in a leather-gloved hand, which she swatted against her other palm as she paced. She wore the banner of the Umbran Empire on a band around her arm- a crescent and three stars in white on a midnight-blue field- and bore the crest of a stylized letter ‘ **I** ’ on her chest. In sharp contrast to the severity of her uniform, her long hair was carrot-red, and her eyes were a vivid purple.  
  
She was also a halfling, which did much to dispel her daunting image. Kami, at the counter, had to struggle not to call her cute.  
  
“How can I help you, officer?” Kami asked, fighting a smile.  
  
“I would watch your tone, peasant!” she snapped. She marched up to the counter. She could scarcely peek over the ledge. She glowered at her honor guard, conspicuously clearing her throat.  
  
The trooper hesitated, before obligingly getting down on his hands and knees, forming a step in front of the counter. The halfling Inquisitor hopped onto his back, her eyes now level with Kami’s.  
  
“Behold, and be wary, lady,” the Inquisitor growled. “The ‘ **I** ’ is upon you. Now then… where is your partner?”  
  
“Just who might I say is asking, ser?” Kami asked.  
  
“I said, watch your tone!” the Inquisitor snapped. “Do you have any idea who you’re speaking to?!”  
  
“...No, I don’t, which is why I-”  
  
“I am Inquisitor Victoria Thorn,” she announced, raising a tiny, petulant fist. “And I am the blade that will bleed the Rebellion dry!”  
  
“More like a ‘a thorn in our paw’,” Ryuji whispered, eavesdropping from the top of the steps. He and Ann shared a glance, and then bumped fists.  
  
“We have to go,” Ann whispered, nodding past Haru’s shoulder. “The balcony. Go.”  
  
“Wait,” Haru protested. “What about-”  
  
“She can handle herself,” Ann insisted. “Come on!”  
  
Ann was first out onto the balcony, leaping off the edge and landing on her feet with all the grace of a cat. Ryuji came second, tucking into a roll as he hit the ground. He sprang up, flicking slush from his stolen mail coat.  
  
Haru lingered inside, watching as Makoto tucked her midnight-blue cloak around her shoulders.  
  
“Your armor,” she murmured.  
  
“I’ll be faster without it, and it’s damaged, anyway,” Makoto said. She ushered Haru to the balcony, where Haru peered over the edge, uneasy.  
  
Ryuji was waiting below. He opened his arms.  
  
“Come on!” He hissed. “I’ll catch you!”  
  
Haru hesitated. She glanced up and met Makoto’s eyes. Makoto nodded.  
  
Haru leapt over the railing and into Ryuji’s waiting arms, bundled in her cloak of royal crimson.  
  
“Oh!” Haru gasped, her heart fluttering at the thought of being carried like a bride.  
  
“Sorry,” Ryuji muttered, sheepish, before setting her on her feet.  
  
Makoto wrapped her sword belt around her sheath and dropped it down. Ryuji caught it, and passed it to Ann. He opened his arms, ready for her. Makoto jumped.  
  
Ryuji caught her- and his arm smacked into Makoto’s wounded back. Makoto let out a sharp bark of pain, before gasping and clamping a hand over her mouth.  
  
“What was that?” Thorn demanded. She slapped her switch against the countertop.  
  
Two troopers tromped up the stairs, seeing Makoto’s damaged breastplate, an unmade bed, and the swirl of curtains in the breeze. One of them stuck his head out the window, and caught a split-second glimpse of the group fleeing down the street- before one of Ann’s fireworks exploded in his face. He flailed, haloed by a nimbus of strobing light and dazzling color, while Inquisitor Thorn screamed out in a rage.  
  
“That’s them! Go after them!” She squealed, like a pouty child, shoving her men out the door. “Move, move, move…!”  
  
Haru raced down the street, Makoto pulling her along by the hand, Ann and Ryuji leading the way. Ryuji huffed, the heavy sack of coppers jingling and smacking against his back.  
  
“Ann!” Ryuji called out, as they veered out of the city and into the hills. “Ann, do you know where you’re going?”  
  
“Yeah,” Ann said, following a wordless, instinctive trail- a trail, or a River. She reached up, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear.  
  
“Akira!” Ann called, her earrings glinting strangely in the light. “Akira, I hope you and Skinny are ready to go!”  
  
~*~  
  
Kemi leaned back on her four spider-limbs, crossing her legs as if she were lounging on a chair. Her eyes shone eerily in the cavernous dark. Akira shuddered, making uncomfortable eye contact with the half dozen beady eyes dotted around her brows.  
  
“Kemi,” Akira swallowed. “You look…”  
  
“Magnificent,” Yusuke breathed. In the shadows of astral space, Kemi shone like a six-pointed star.  
  
“ _Different_ ,” Akira finished. “Have you, uh… “ He watched as Kemi arched a spider-limb over her shoulder and idly scratched her head with a chitinous barb. “Have you been working out, or…?”  
  
“I know, I know,” Kemi shrugged, idly studying a fingernail. “...To be perfectly honest, this is what I get for testing potions on myself. This region is rather volatile in terms of magical activity, and the concentration of magicite may have been at fault… hm. More tests. More data. Kami won’t touch the stuff- never mix business with pleasure, I say. I need a new guinea pig.”  
  
Kemi smiled dangerously, revealing a pair of strangely pointed canines.  
  
“Why…? Could you or your friend there use a job…?”  
  
“Actually, we’ve kind of got a job lined up already,” Akira said. “I need your good stock.”  
  
“Take it,” Kemi nodded. She crossed over, arched her spider-limbs over her shoulders and slid a heavy stone slab aside. Kemi reached in and fished out a number of vials, secured in leather bandoliers.  
  
“Thanks, Doc,” Akira grinned, rolling up the bundle and tucking it away in his coat.  
  
“What were you testing?” Yusuke wondered.  
  
“What’s that, Skinny?”  
  
“What potion did you concoct for yourself, to create such a… vision?”  
  
“Flatterer,” Kemi smiled. “...I come here to pick mushrooms. Very useful; very tasty once all the poison’s been simmered out. They spoil under bright light, so you can’t take a lantern in here. I needed a potion to help me see in the dark, and perhaps some pheromones to keep the… locals… from bothering me.”  
  
Tae clutched the end of a spider-limb in her hand and nuzzled it to her cheek.  
  
“...As you can see, I got a two-for-one deal. And then some. The first batch must have been a bit too strong. Hm. More tests. More data.”  
  
Akira’s earring shimmered. He blinked, flicking at his linkpearl. He furrowed his brow, glancing up at Kemi.  
  
“Gotta run, Doc. Got company coming,” Akira said. “What do I owe you?”  
  
“The usual price will do,” Kemi smiled. “...But if you’d like me to entertain your guests… that’s going to cost you extra.”  
  
Akira grinned. “Deal.”  
  
Kemi stepped back into the darkness, taking her menacing escort with her. She became just one of many spiders lurking in the shadows, shining golden eyes watching from afar.  
  
Haru, Makoto, Ann, and Ryuji came running in, Ryuji doubling over onto his knees to catch his breath.  
  
“They’re right behind us,” Ryuji huffed, flipping up the visor on his mask and wiping his brow. “Did you find her?”  
  
“Yeah,” Akira nodded. “I’m ready to go.”  
  
“Follow me,” Yusuke said, ushering the group forward. “I know another way out.”  
  
“Not to sound like an ass about this, but should the blind guy be the one leading the way?” Ann wondered.  
  
“The River will show us the way,” Yusuke said, resolute.  
  
“Do you see a river anywhere?” Haru murmured into Makoto’s ear. Makoto only hushed her and held her close.  
  
They fled through the shadowed depths, feeling the weight of inhuman- and once-human- eyes upon them. Mere moments later, Thorn’s retinue came rushing onto the platform, weapons at the ready.  
  
“Out of my way! Out of my way!” Thorn wailed, swatting aside her own troops with switches of her riding crop. She stepped out onto the ledge, gazing at the cocooned bundles of spider silk rising like mushroom caps from the gloom.  
  
“Ser,” a trooper called out. “It’s Sergeant Mishima, ser!”  
  
Thorn pulled a knife from her belt and cut the webs from Mishima’s face, yanking his helmet off his head.  
  
“Nishima!”  
  
“Th-That’s ‘Mishima’, ma’am-”  
  
“ _Like it matters!_ ” Thorn snapped. “This place is a maze! You saw them- where did they go?!”  
  
“Inquisitor!” Mishima stammered, eyes wide. “The- The spiders…! The Plague…!”  
  
Thorn threw her hands up in frustration. “Ugh! Nishima! I would’ve thought you, of all people, would know better to fall for Rebel _propaganda_ …!”  
  
Thorn blinked in confusion at Mishima’s stricken expression. She slowly turned around.  
  
Eight golden eyes glinted in her face.  
  
“Boo,” Kemi smiled.  
  
~*~  
  
That evening, Kami was tending her garden, quietly wondering and worrying after the young Princess Okumura and her ragtag retinue. The sun was dipping beneath the trees, and fog was rolling in. The light wouldn’t last much longer. She took a deep breath and sighed, wiping sweat from her brow, before bending over and moving to the next row.  
  
She felt strong arms around her waist from behind, and a chest pressing into her back. Kami smiled, tossing aside her gardening tools and leaning into the embrace.  
  
“Evening, spider,” Kami cooed.  
  
“Evening, honeybee,” Kemi breathed into her throat. “Did you miss me…?”  
  
“Only always,” Kami grinned. She wriggled around in Kemi’s embrace, capturing her lips in a gentle, save-some-for-later kiss. She felt the telltale sensation of chitin brushing against her leg and lifting the edge of her skirt. She swatted the spider-limb away.  
  
“Where do you think you’re going?” Kami asked, smirking. “We haven’t even had dinner.”  
  
“Then I’ll go ahead and get cooking,” Kemi grinned. She lifted up a burlap sack. “I got mushrooms!”  
  
“I’ll pick out a bottle of wine, then.”  
  
“I could always make you something stronger, you know.”  
  
“ _No_ , Kemi. We agreed. No potion-brewing after dark…”  
  
“Oh, you’re no fun…”  
  
The two women disappeared back into the shop, their arms looped around each others’ waists. One of Kemi’s lower spider-limbs went back to toying with Kami’s skirt, while the other hooked around the edge of the door and pulled it shut behind them.  
  
~*~  
  
The sound of the fleeing Princess vanished into the distance, replaced by the constant click and chitter of spiders in the dark. Mishima squirmed, slowly loosening the cocoon’s hold on his arms.  
  
“Ugh! Inquisitor!” Mishima called out. “Inquisitor, are you alright?”  
  
Thorn sighed in exasperation, webbed to Mishima’s chest like a toddler in a chest harness.  
  
“...I’m going to be stuck here forever with you, aren’t I?”  
  
“No, Inquisitor, it’s alright,” Mishima said, managing to wriggle an arm free. “See? I think it’s starting to wear off. So, you’ll only be stuck here with me for a few more hours!”  
  
Thorn heaved a sigh, her arms crossed over her chest, pouting like a child.  
  
“...I have to go to the bathroom.”  
  
~*~  
  
“...And that’s it for tonight!” Futaba crowed. She slapped her palms down on the table, rattling the dice and figurines on top, and pushed herself out of her seat. “...Bathroom!”  
  
She scurried off, and the room buzzed with post-session chatter.  
  
“Akira, were you really gonna kill me just because I called you ‘Rebel scum’?” Mishima whined, dismayed.  
  
“Hey, you’re a dirty Imperial,” Akira shrugged. “You should’ve just given me directions.”  
  
“Aww, man…”  
  
“Ann-chan, Ryu-kun,” Haru chimed in. “Your characters are siblings?”  
  
“Yep!” they both chirped.  
  
“Aww, so the Twin Lions performers are actual twins?” Haru cooed. “That’s so cute!”  
  
“Yes, about that,” Makoto added. “I… I know I’m the only one here who _isn’t_ an only child, but… usually siblings don’t do quite so much flirting.”  
  
“What!” Ann balked. “What are you talking about?”  
  
“Yeah, Mako,” Ryuji shrugged. “It’s just some good-natured bickering. Don’t get it twisted.”  
  
Makoto nodded. “Perhaps I misread.”  
  
“Y’know, some people, you’re close enough to make fun of ‘em. It’s just like when Ann makes fun of my taste in tank tops, or I tell her she looks dumb when her mouth is full.”  
  
Ann rolled her eyes. “Hate you.”  
  
“Bite me.”  
  
“Yusuke,” Akira began, “I see you’re going full Star Wars.”  
  
“Hm?” Yusuke looked up.  
  
“...Y’know… the Force… the energy of all living things…?”  
  
“He doesn’t watch movies, remember?” Ann teased.  
  
“The Notebook is one thing,” Ryuji rolled his eyes. “But come on, Yusuke. You haven’t seen Star Wars? Not _one_ ? There have been, like, _eight_ of them!”  
  
“The concept of chi is hardly original to me, or to this ‘Star Wars’,” Yusuke said coolly. “I thought I’d put my own little flair to it and call it the ‘River’.”  
  
“You should call it ‘the Lifestream’,” Akira said with a straight face. “Futaba will love that.”  
  
“Oh! That _does_ have a certain poetry to it…”  
  
“People talking about me!” Futaba announced as she barged back into the room and burrowed her way back into the crook of Akira’s arm. She typed out a rapid-fire message to Kana over chat, before shoving her laptop aside and stabbing her fingers towards Ann and Ryuji in accusation.  
  
“You two! I’m mad at you!” Futaba grumbled.  
  
“Why? What’d we do?” Ryuji asked, smirking.  
  
“I had this whole thing planned for you guys vs. the giant spider cave, and then you and Ann went and did your own thing!”  
  
“Akira just left the earnings from our last show before becoming fugitives of the Empire just sitting around backstage!” Ann protested. “What, did you want us to go into this adventure broke?”  
  
“ _Yes!_ ” Futaba huffed.  
  
_“Don’t worry, player one,”_ Kana said from her laptop. _“I’ll just look over these loot tables and change some things around, rebalance some prices. It’ll be okay!”_ _  
_  
“Thanks, player two,” Futaba cooed.  
  
“Hey, Kana,” Akira smirked, “give me three more sessions, and I bet I can break this game’s economy right in half.”  
  
_“You better not!”_ Kana warned.  
  
“I spent hours slaving over graph paper to make these spider caves,” Futaba grumbled, “and then you leave me stuck to Nishima and covered in goo!”  
  
Makoto grimaced. “Please don’t phrase it like that.”  
  
“It looks like I need to break out the bigger guns! Write this down, player two! Next session, I’m gonna hit you guys with some real out-of-this-world-”  
  
Akira and Futaba’s phone alarms buzzed at the same time. A moment later, Ann and Ryuji glanced at their phones, too.  
  
“That’s the train,” Ryuji said, springing up. “We gotta go.”  
  
“Whoa, you guys aren’t staying over tonight?” Akira wondered.  
  
“Sorry,” Ann said, sheepish. “You had us last week. Shiho says it’s her turn.”  
  
“And I just can’t say no to Shiho, you feel me?” Ryuji grinned.  
  
“Fine,” Akira pouted. “Next week, though, why don’t you bring her over?”  
  
“I’ll ask her,” Ann beamed.  
  
“How about you, Mako?” Ryuji asked. “You know you’re always welcome at Ann’s place, and Shiho would be stoked to see you.”  
  
“Next time,” Makoto said, patting Haru’s hand. “I have plans.”  
  
Another round of phone alarms went buzzing across the group.  
  
“That would be the train,” Yusuke said, gathering his things. “Yuuki?”  
  
“Coming!”  
  
There was a round of hugs, a few chaste kisses- and a few not so chaste- along with a chorus of goodbyes, and soon enough, the Sakura household fell quiet again. Futaba fell back into her chair with a contented sigh, before slumping forward onto her elbows at the table, clacking at her keyboard. Between her and Kana, the notes for next week’s session were already well underway.  
  
She felt Akira looming over her shoulder.  
  
“Spoilers,” she grumbled. She squeaked as a seven-day pill planner poked her in the temple.  
  
“Meds,” Akira insisted.  
  
Futaba nodded, and they took their pills together. Akira went to go wash out their glasses in the sink. His voice drifted over from the kitchen.  
  
“So, you’ve got big plans for next week, huh?”  
  
“ _Spoilers!_ ” Futaba groaned. “And yes, I do, so no peeking.”  
  
“Alright, alright,” Akira said. He emerged from the kitchen while Futaba clacked away at her campaign doc, and casually rested his chin on her head. Without a word, she reached up, grabbed his glasses, and flung them down the table.  
  
“I wasn’t looking!” Akira protested, groping for his glasses. He put them back on his face, leaned down and pressed a kiss to the part in Futaba’s hair.  
  
“Look, I’m heading back next door,” he said. “Night, bug. Love you.”  
  
“Love you,” Futaba murmured.  
  
_“Hey, Akira?”_ came Kana’s voice.  
  
“What’s up, player two?”  
  
_“I was curious. Futaba based some of these characters off of people you know, right?”_ _  
_ _  
_ “Yeah.”  
_  
_ _“So… your doctor, and your old high school teacher… are they…?”_ _  
_ _  
_ “No! ...I don’t know…? I mean, it’s none of my business…”  
  
Futaba shook her head, grinning impishly.  
  
“ _That’s_ a yes.”  
  
~*~


	3. One Ring to Rule Them All

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Your party sets out from Larksnettle and begins the journey east, to the riverside town of Hawk’s Landing. There, you hope to make contact with the local Rebel cell, and begin your quest of uniting the Corona Resistance. But the agents of the Umbra Empire are still hot on your trail…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, welcome to 'the Phantom Thieves reenact LOTR'- with a hint of Fire Emblem and Sailor Moon. I bumped up the rating for violence and language, but there's still nothing *too* explicit. I hope you all enjoy the read. ^^

~*~  
  
The party broke east, leaving Larksnettle and Aranea Caverns behind them. They made good time out of the city, carried along by the swell of adrenaline their urgent flight had given them. Then the sun went down, and the moon came out, and Princess Okumura’s ragtag retinue trudged along, churning snow to slush underfoot. The tromp of Imperial boots and the light of bobbing torches became little more than a distant memory.  
  
They came upon a clearing a decent enough distance from the road- far enough not to be seen immediately, far enough for the ground to be fluffy snow rather than slush and mire. It was as good a spot as any for them to make camp.  
  
“I’ll keep watch,” Yusuke muttered, before going off and sitting with his back to a tree, aloof, inscrutable.  
  
Ann eased herself onto a fallen log, hugging her arms across her chest.  
  
“Cold?” Ryuji asked, setting down beside her.  
  
“I’ll manage,” Ann said. But when Ryuji wordlessly put an arm around her shoulders, she leaned into him, and didn’t push him away.  
  
Haru sat, huddled in her cloak of royal crimson. Makoto circled the camp and returned with an armful of sticks. She dropped the bundle onto the ground, the air heavy with a restless quiet.  
  
“Well,” Akira announced, lying on his back in the snow. “This is uncomfortable.”  
  
“This sucks!” Ann cried out. “I was kinda riding the thrill before, but it’s finally hitting me- we’re doing this. We’re really doing this. In less than a day, I’ve gone from putting on a great show for my adoring fans to being hunted by Imperial troopers and freezing my ass off in the snow. Thanks for that, _princess_ .”  
  
Haru squirmed, but said nothing. Makoto glared.  
  
“Watch your tone,” Makoto said sharply.  
  
“Yeah, watch this, sister,” Ann said, forming a V with her fingers and scornfully blowing Makoto a kiss. “I was an honest entertainer before you turned me and my brother into fugitives.”  
  
Makoto stammered, red creeping onto her cheeks. “How… _dare_ -”  
  
“Enough,” Haru said softly. She touched Makoto’s arm.  
  
Makoto sat with a huff. “Ruffians,” she muttered.  
  
Ann shot her a glare. Ryuji squeezed her shoulder, and she looked away.  
  
“No carriage, no pack mule, no tent, just whatever we can carry and the clothes on our backs…” Akira muttered, laying back in the snow. He shot Haru a venomous smile. “It’s not what _you’re_ used to, is it?”  
  
Haru shrank under his gaze. She swallowed. “...I… I can make us a fire, at least.”  
  
Haru slipped her ring onto her finger. The royal crest of Corona shone like the sun, filling their gloomy little alcove with warmth and light. The radiant heat sapped the moisture from the snow-soaked firewood Makoto had gathered, and an instant later, they ignited with a whoosh of flame.  
  
Ryuji whistled. Beside him, Ann tried her hardest not to look impressed.  
  
“This is for real, huh?” Ryuji murmured. “Your ring- the sun sigil of Corona.”  
  
“Only Corona’s royal family and their champions can wield the Light,” Haru explained. “This ring was my father’s before he- before I-” Haru bit her lip.  
  
“It is the kingdom’s most precious relic,” Makoto said, reverent. “We call it… the Fire Emblem.”  
  
Ann snorted. “Is… is that right?”  
  
Makoto bristled. “...I don’t see how that’s funny.”  
  
“What I find funny,” Akira began, “is how the Empire is so set on hunting you down.”  
  
He sat up, gazing at Haru and her ring with a strange intensity.  
  
“So much fuss,” Akira said softly, as if entranced. “So much trouble. So much fear, and doubt… over so small a thing. Such a… pretty little thing…”  
  
Haru shifted uncomfortably beneath the weight of his stare. Makoto glowered.  
  
“...Mind your eyes, _thief_ ,” she spat.  
  
Akira’s expression grew flinty and hard.  
  
“...Sure,” he muttered acidly, laying back in the snow. “...Swipe a few coppers, price-gouge a few tickets, that makes me a thief. But steal a whole nation out from under its’ people’s feet? No… that makes you a _king_ .”  
  
Haru blinked. “... _Excuse_ me…?”  
  
“Yeah, about that,” Ann said, planting a hand on her hip. “How does it feel, being the daughter of a man who shook hands with the Emperor?”  
  
Haru got to her feet. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. My father saved us from a war we couldn’t win-”  
  
“Your father sold us out,” Ann spat. “And now here you come, a year later, just to clean up his mess. Oh, _now_ you care about our freedom? _Now_ you care, after the Empire marched in and took over? What the hell took you so long, _princess_ ?”  
  
Haru flinched. Ann said the word like the most savage of threats.  
  
“I… I was waiting for the right time…”  
  
“The right time? _The right time?_ ” Ann seethed. “Don’t you give me that _shit!_ ”  
  
Ann jumped to her feet, slapping Ryuji away when he tried to pull her back down.  
  
“ _Now_ you care about revolution? _Now_ you care about resistance, after we’ve already lost? After your father surrendered our kingdom to the Empire without firing a fucking shot? I’ll tell you what I think about you and your plan, Miss Priss! _I_ think you’re a stuffy royal who doesn’t know the first thing about the real world! _I_ think you abandoned us for a _year_ just so you could frolic through the woods with your doe-eyed captain of the guard! I don’t think you give one shit about your people or their freedom- _I_ think you just want your castle back!”  
  
Haru squeaked as Ann hurled a fistful of snow at her cloak.  
  
“Here! Here’s your throne, princess! Out here in the woods, in the cold, in the mud, alone, with the Imperial army out to kill us, just so they can get their hands on you! How does it feel? Huh?! _How does it feel to be_ **_just like everyone else_ ** _?!”_ _  
_  
Haru’s lips quivered. She gasped out a sob, before burying her face in her hands. Ann stood, seething, clenching her fists until her knuckles were white. Makoto drew Haru close, one hand on the hilt of her sword.  
  
“Not one more word, witch,” Makoto snarled.  
  
Ann took a deep breath.  
  
“...I’m done here,” she spat. She turned on her heel and stalked into the dark.  
  
~*~  
  
“Ann… Ann, wait-”  
  
“Leave me _alone_ , Ryuji!” Ann snapped, stomping off through the snow.  
  
Ryuji groaned in frustration. “Okay, well if you won’t stop, could you at least keep it down? I think they can hear you yelling all the way in the Empire!”  
  
Ann took a deep breath and sighed. She crossed her arms and turned around.  
  
“What,” she spat.  
  
“It’s cold as shit,” Ryuji said. “You’re gonna get sick. Come back to camp.”  
  
“Why?” Ann sniffed. “So the princess can try her pitch again?”  
  
“Give her a break, Ann,” Ryuji sighed. “She’s just a kid.”  
  
“‘Just a kid’? Ryuji, we’re on the Empire’s shit list because of her!” Ann snapped. “Half a day ago, we had shows lined up for the whole month. We threw away our careers getting dragged into her revolution- I won’t let her throw away our lives!”  
  
“That’s why we have to stick together!” Ryuji shot back. “You said it yourself. We’re on the Empire’s shit list now. They’ll be coming for us, whether the princess is with us or not. But if we throw our lot in with the Rebellion, maybe… maybe we’ll get through this.”  
  
Ann stood there for a long moment, tapping her foot. Eventually, she blew out a sigh, meeting Ryuji’s eyes.  
  
“...So… if I leave now, you wouldn’t follow me, is what you’re saying,” she muttered, rueful.  
  
“C’mon, Ann,” Ryuji said gently. “I’d follow you into death itself. I mean, obviously, that’s not my first choice.”  
  
Ann sighed, and relented. She leaned into Ryuji, resting her chin on his shoulder.  
  
“Where we go, we go together,” she said, like a prayer.  
  
“Yeah,” Ryuji said, clapping a hand into her back. “You’re stuck with me.”  
  
Ann smiled. “Hate you.”  
  
“Bite me.”  
  
The wind picked up, and Ann shivered. She huffed, her breath misting in the air.  
  
“Alright, let’s go back. It’s cold as shit out here.”  
  
They began their trek back to camp, haloed in moonlight. The campfire was a pinprick of light in the distance, shining gold amidst the gloom. The skeletal silhouettes of trees loomed all around them, draped in snow that gleamed ghostly white.  
  
Ann stopped. She saw it, on the edge of her peripheral vision. A shadow, moving strangely in the light.  
  
“What?” Ryuji asked.  
  
“Shh,” Ann whispered. “...I thought I saw-”  
  
A blur exploded out of the shadows and slammed Ann off her feet.  
  
~*~  
  
Yusuke lifted his head with a gasp. He stood up, clutching his cane with both hands. Something was wrong. The River flowed strangely, as if parting around stones kicked into the stream.  
  
Akira felt it, too, even if he’d never call it by such flowery terms. He sat up, a gloved hand closing around the hilt of his dagger. Across the campfire, Haru was sitting, hugging her knees to her chest, riding out the last of her tears. Makoto sat beside, not quite touching, silent, inscrutable, wrapped in her cloak. She met Akira’s eyes for a moment, a flicker of curiosity and concern flashing from beneath the scorn.  
  
A bolt of white lightning shot up out of the trees. It exploded into a second moon of sizzling, pale light.  
  
Akira sprang to his feet, spinning his knife in his hands. He saw the question in Makoto’s eyes.  
  
“Ryuji,” he said.  
  
Then a dozen brusque voices echoed through the trees, and the Imperial patrol was upon them.  
  
~*~  
  
Ann scarcely had time to scream before the ground slammed the air from her lungs. The figure clamped a gauntleted hand around her neck and smashed her shoulders down into the snow. From within its armored visor, it studied her, with a single, unblinking, ruby-red eye.  
  
Ryuji bellowed and smashed the figure aside. Ann gasped, choking, as its metal grip left her throat. Ryuji pulled her to her feet and they shared a glance, before turning to the beast.  
  
The figure sprang up from the snow, coiling its unnaturally long, slender legs beneath it. It was a gangly creature, humanoid but taller and thinner than any human, its body covered in interlocking plates of gleaming brass. It flexed its three-fingered, clawed hands. A pair of jet-black dagger blades extended from its gauntlets with a scrape of metal.  
  
Ryuji clenched his fists, white lightning shivering around his form. Beside him, Ann pinched her fingers and pulled- drawing a blade out of thin air, a rapier trailing wisps of glittering crimson magic.  
  
Ryuji gave a shout and sent his lion charging forward. The figure coiled its legs beneath it, and pounced. It passed through Ryuji’s phantasm as if it were thin air, a blurring corkscrew that scythed towards Ann with its whirling twin blades. Ann reflexively raised her rapier to parry the blow. The figure cut through her blade like fog and sliced open Ann’s chest with a shriek of metal.  
  
“Ann!” Ryuji cried, beating the figure back with a sledgehammer fist to the thing’s faceplate.  
  
“I’m okay…” Ann hissed, glancing down at the glinting slash of metal that almost- but not quite- pierced her mail coat. “What the hell is this thing? Our phantasms aren’t working!”  
  
“I don’t know!” Ryuji cried, ducking past a dagger-swipe of the thing’s long, multi-jointed limbs.  
  
Ann kicked the figure’s leg out from beneath it and it stumbled forward, its attack interrupted. Ryuji grabbed it by the wrists and hurled it into a tree. It re-oriented itself in mid-air, landing in a crouch against the tree trunk, before uncoiling its legs and pouncing. It shot through the air, a blur of metal and whistling blades.  
  
Ann darted aside at the last moment. The figure thunked its arm blades into the tree trunk. It squirmed and strained, but the blades were stuck fast. An instant later, Ryuji came up from behind and drove his fist into the thing’s skull. Its faceplate smashed into the wood with enough force to crack. An angry, inhuman voice, like the scrape of metal on metal, issued from within its armored visor.  
  
Ann and Ryuji didn’t wait. They turned on their heels, and ran.  
  
~*~  
  
Back at the campsite, the attack swiftly devolved into a claustrophobic mess of struggling bodies and hacking blades. Shadows sprang from all sides, swinging, groping, clawing, overwhelming the party with sheer numbers. Yusuke and Akira were fighting fruitless duels with Imperial troopers whose armor they couldn’t pierce, and Makoto and Haru were surrounded by half a dozen soldiers, Makoto’s blade- and the demands that Haru be taken alive- fending off blows from all sides.  
  
Haru murmured anxiously, eyes flitting from one soldier to the next. She flinched as Makoto took a blunt force blow across the face hard enough to make her grunt. Makoto spat out blood, fury in her eyes.  
  
Haru grit her teeth, and twisted the ring on her finger.  
  
“ **Light!** ” she commanded, her ring shining like the sun. Golden light bloomed across the woods, and for a moment, the Imperial squad stopped and stared, transfixed with awe.  
  
Then Haru thrust her palm towards the nearest soldier and immolated him in a pillar of golden fire.  
  
The man’s anguished screams jolted his fellows back into action. Another trooper, forgetting the order to capture Haru in his haste to avenge his comrade, hefted his sword above his head. Haru raised her hand, catching the blade with little more than a tree branch.  
  
The sword clanged against the branch as if against metal. The trooper stared, aghast, as golden light flowed from Haru’s ring and into the branch, pooling in an orb of light at the branch’s tip. The orb morphed into an axehead of golden light, and Haru crunched the ethereal blade into the trooper’s chest, setting his torso ablaze.  
  
She waved the branch as if it were a staff, the axehead melting into a trio of golden wisps that zipped across the battlefield. One wisp darted into Makoto’s hands and set her sword alight. Makoto flashed a dangerous smile, breaking her sword free from the trio of Imperial blades hemming her in. She tore out the stomachs of three Imperial troopers in a single, vicious stroke, her sword trailing golden fire and white-hot, molten mail links.  
  
Akira ducked under a trooper’s guard and punched his dagger into his gut. The trooper fell, a dead weight beneath him, and he turned, Haru’s wisp dancing along his blade. He stabbed a second trooper in the throat, whirling on a third and slashed a series of cuts into his chest. The trooper sank to his knees, a letter ‘A’ burned into his torso.  
  
Akira’s linkpearl flashed. He spun his knife in his hands and hurled it across the clearing.  
  
The trooper Yusuke was struggling with went stiff. Without missing a beat, Yusuke plucked Akira’s dagger out of the trooper’s back and scythed through troopers like wheat in a field, blades flashing gold in both hands.  
  
“Princess!” Akira cried, yanking out a leather bandolier and rifling through Kemi’s potions. “Melt the snow!”  
  
“What?” Haru blinked.  
  
Ann and Ryuji burst into the clearing, to the surprise and dismay of the few remaining Imperial troops who saw the tide of the battle turning and weren’t so eager to drown. Ryuji smashed a trooper aside with a conjured warhammer of solidified lightning. Ann skewered a soldier with her own conjured blade of red fire, before dropping him dead on the ground with nary a visible wound- the mind makes it real.  
  
“It’s behind us!” Ann called, before a horrid, mechanical shrieking echoed through the woods.  
  
The assassin exploded out of the treeline, obsidian arm blades flashing in the night. It turned, watching its last pair of handlers fall to Yusuke’s bladework, scanning the assembled group with its shining, ruby-red eye. The baleful red light of that inhuman gaze settled on Haru- on the ring on her finger. It pounced-  
  
“Haru!” Makoto cried.  
  
A cone of fire surged out of Haru’s palm and slapped the assassin out of the air. It crunched into the slushy ground, flames roaring past.  
  
Haru lowered her hand, wisps of light lingering like fireflies around her.  
  
The assassin was on one knee in the mud and the muck, scorched, smoldering, but very much alive. It fixed its hateful crimson gaze on Haru before it, purring that awful, mechanical rasp.  
  
Akira yanked the cork from the vial and let it fly.  
  
There was an explosion of white smoke and tinkling glass. Kemi’s freezing potion had refrozen the molten slush into a skin of ice, entombing the assassin in its own body. It whirred and rasped, fighting against the confines of its icy prison. After a long moment, it went still, and the light of its inhuman eye went out.  
  
“Is everyone alright?” Haru asked gently. She was met by a series of exhausted, muted nods.  
  
“They will doubtlessly come looking for their lost patrol,” Yusuke said.  
  
“We can’t stay here,” Makoto said, urging the group forward. “There should be a village up ahead.”  
  
“I wouldn’t mind a real roof,” Ann muttered.  
  
“Or a real bed,” Akira chimed in, beside her.  
  
Ryuji glanced at the assassin, frozen in ice amidst a skirl of scorched mud and molten snow. He bumped an elbow against Ann’s.  
  
“Guess that’s why they call it the Fire Emblem, huh?”  
  
“Shut up, Ryuji. Just… just shut up.”  
  
~*~  
  
The group pushed on, hoping to get some distance between themselves and the broken remnants of the Imperial patrol scattered around their campsite. Rain began to fall; an icy, slushy rain that made every step treacherous. They shivered, clutched their coats and cloaks tighter around their shoulders, and trudged on.  
  
They made it to a village after hours of miserable slogging through the mud. They stepped into the inn, still bustling even in the middle of the night. The innkeeper looked up from the counter and greeted them all with a jovial grin, in stark contrast to the bedraggled group stamping mud from their boots and onto his floor.  
  
“Welcome, welcome!” He grinned. “I know we look full up tonight, but we’ve always got room for more. How many for your table, Miss…?”  
  
Haru and Makoto exchanged glances.  
  
“...Haruka,” Haru said quickly, clearing her throat. “I’m Haruka, and this is my… cousin, Michiru.”  
  
“Yeah, and I’m Usagi, and this guy in the long coat here is Mamoru,” Ann muttered. Akira snickered beside her.  
  
“Well, then come on in,” the innkeeper laughed. “Table for six, coming right up!”  
  
They settled in at a corner table, one with about as much privacy as they could ask for in such a crowded inn. Despite the raucous atmosphere around them, the mood at the table was heavy with gloom. Ryuji, currently the party’s last lingering shred of morale, thought to lighten the mood with food and a round of ale. While the barmaid took Ryuji’s order, Yusuke slipped into the crowd.  
  
Haru nibbled at a block of hard cheese, shifting in her seat. She felt the uncomfortable weight of eyes upon her. She bit her lip, tucked her hands on her lap under the table, and slipped her ring into her pocket.  
  
“People are looking at me…” Haru murmured. “...could they be with the Empire…?”  
  
“There are plenty of reasons to look _your_ way,” Akira flashed a smile. “I can think of a couple.”  
  
A hint of red flashed across Haru’s cheeks. She stared down at her lap, mumbling.  
  
“That’s… that’s so uncouth.”  
  
“Yeah? Welcome to the real world,” Akira said. He waved over a barmaid. “‘Scuse me, miss?”  
  
“Can I help you, ser?” she asked. “If I may say, we don’t get many tieflings up here. I like your horns.”  
  
“Thank you,” Akira flashed a winning smile. “I grew them myself.”  
  
“Could I get you more food, or another ale, or…?”  
  
“Just a question, if you would.”  
  
“Of course, ser.”  
  
Akira looked up, his eyes glinting in the lamplight. “When do you get off?”  
  
The barmaid blinked, stammering. “...In… In a few hours, ser.”  
  
“I could make it happen a bit sooner, if you like,” Akira grinned, lecherous.  
  
“...yes… well… let me know if you need anything,” the barmaid squirmed, before slipping away.  
  
“Dude, what the hell?” Ryuji hissed, kicking Akira under the table.  
  
“Relax,” Akira muttered. “I was just proving a point to the dear princess. There are more things to worry about than Imperials, here…”  
  
The minutes ticked by, the group waiting in restless quiet. Eventually, Yusuke returned.  
  
“I have made arrangements,” he said softly, slipping back into his seat. “The Rebel cell in this town has agreed to meet with us. Now, we need only await their summons.”  
  
“How long will that take?” Makoto asked.  
  
“I have been told word will come either tonight or tomorrow.”  
  
“What?!” Ann hissed. “We don’t have that kind of time. We still have the Empire on our heels, remember? And they’ll be extra pissed now that we killed that patrol!”  
  
Yusuke bristled. “...These things take time. They must watch us, analyze our intent, be certain we are who we say we are. By agreeing to meet with us at all, the Rebels risk exposure. They must be certain.”  
  
Ann sighed and slumped down until she was sprawled face down on the table. She opened her hand, palm up, and gestured to Ryuji.  
  
“Key.”  
  
“Where are you going?” Akira asked.  
  
“I’m done with tonight, okay?” Ann snapped. “I’m tired of being wet. I’m tired of being cold. I’m tired of this- this stupid-” Ann wrestled her stolen Imperial trooper’s mail coat over her head and flung it over the back of her chair. “I’m tired of this stupid uniform that doesn’t even fit. I’m tired of fighting. I’m tired of- of being tired!”  
  
Ann huffed, shaking her head.  
  
“...I’m going to bed,” she said, snatching one of two room keys from Ryuji’s hand. “Wake me up when we know where we’re going.”  
  
Ann stalked upstairs. Akira watched her go, before sighing and plucking the second room key from Ryuji’s hands.  
  
“Well. If we’re here for the night, guess I’ll turn in, too,” Akira said. “C’mon, Skinny.”  
  
Akira led Yusuke upstairs, leaving Makoto, Haru and Ryuji in a somber quiet. It would take more than their food arriving to lift everyone’s spirits, Haru could tell. They’d known each other for less than a day, and already morale was at an all-time low. This quest of hers wasn’t off to the best start, and the companions she’d gathered, purely by chance, weren’t exactly what she was expecting. Were these the people with whom she’d retake her country? Were these the heroes the kingdom deserved? Only time would-  
  
~*~  
  
“Kids!” Sojiro called. “Dinner’s ready!”  
  
“Da-ad!” Futaba whined, pawing at her face. “I was _narrating_ !”  
  
“Well, pause your game for a minute so everybody can come get a plate,” Sojiro said, standing in the doorway. “Or are you going to tell me you can’t pause a multiplayer game?”  
  
“You can’t, though,” Futaba grumbled, before hopping out of her seat and ducking into the kitchen regardless.  
  
“Thank you for the food, sir,” Makoto said, bowing her head politely. “You didn’t have to cook for all of us.”  
  
“You’re not ordering pizza every Tuesday when there’s a perfectly good kitchen right here,” Sojiro said. “Besides, scaling that recipe up? Piece of cake. Just need a big enough pot.”  
  
There was a chime at the door, and Sojiro wandered off to answer it, sidestepping the gaggle of young adults crowding into his kitchen. Haru lingered at the table, Ann close beside.  
  
“Hey,” Ann said, gently laying a hand on Haru’s shoulder. “Are you okay? I really laid into you, back there.”  
  
“Oh, it’s alright!” Haru said. She reached up and twined her fingers with Ann’s without any fuss.  
  
“Are you sure?” Ann asked. “You were really crying.”  
  
“I was in-character!” Haru chirped. “I think I’m getting the hang of this ‘roleplaying’ thing.”  
  
The front door opened and shut, and voices drifted in from the threshold.  
  
“Hey there, kiddo. How was class?”  
  
“Too late and too long, as usual, sir.”  
  
“Well, come on in. You’re just in time for dinner…”  
  
~*~  
  
Their food arrived, and, predictably, Ryuji was back in good spirits. He busied himself assembling a giant sandwich out of a platter of bread, meats, and cheeses- a towering sandwich that Makoto found to be a fool’s ambition, as he couldn’t possibly fit his mouth around it to take a bite. Haru, meanwhile, only picked at her food, her mind in turmoil. It began sinking in that she killed a man today. Two, even, and helped to kill a dozen more. The reality of what this rebellion would mean, and the scope of the task before her, unfolded in her mind like a road into a vast nothing.  
  
Haru gasped as an elbow nudged into hers. She looked up, and caught Makoto’s eyes. She offered her knight a small, shy smile.  
  
Makoto smiled back, but it was a fleeting thing, as she turned and leered suspiciously at a shadowed corner of the inn.  
  
“That one in the hood’s done nothing but stare at you since we arrived,” Makoto murmured, idly scraping butter against a slice of coarse brown bread.  
  
The barmaid from before came by with a tray of drinks. Haru beckoned her over, and she stopped, glancing with silent relief at Akira’s empty seat.  
  
“Excuse me,” Haru said, indicating the corner table with a nod. “That one there… who are they?”  
  
The barmaid squirmed. “...They’re one of those Rangers,” she explained. “They’re dangerous folk, wandering the Wilds. What their right name is, I’ve never heard… but here, folks call ‘em Strider.”  
  
A figure in a hooded, forest-green cloak watched from the shadows of a corner table. They reached up, touching a carved wooden idol hanging from their throat. It shimmered silver beneath their fingertips, illuminating long, dark hair and chestnut eyes.  
  
Haru exhaled, fidgeting under the stranger’s gaze. She blew out a sigh, and got to her feet, making for the stairwell.  
  
Makoto made to follow, but Haru ushered her back into her seat.  
  
“I’ll be okay,” Haru said. “I’m just going upstairs.”  
  
Makoto anxiously watched Haru slip into the crowd. She glanced back at the corner table to find the hooded stranger also gone. She furrowed her brow in concern, only to turn and see Ryuji take a gigantic, messy bite of his sandwich. She glared at him, watching crumbs go flying- onto his plate, down his armor, onto her cloak.  
  
Ryuji caught her staring, and casually lifted up his sandwich.  
  
“...You want a bite?” He asked, his mouth full. Makoto only sighed.  
  
~*~  
  
Haru stepped inside, quietly shutting the door behind her. She found Ann, sitting in front of the fireplace, toweling off her rain-soaked hair.  
  
“If you don’t want people looking at you,” Ann said, barely even turning to her, “then maybe you shouldn’t wear the royal colors. Your hair, too- you should cut it. Dye it. Right now, you stick out like a sore thumb.”  
  
Haru took a seat beside Ann. She watched the other woman carefully, folding her hands in her lap.  
  
“I know what you think about me,” Haru began. “And you’re right. I am a daughter of royalty. I am a princess, and I have known wealth and privilege for my entire life. I have not known cold, nor weariness, nor hunger. Yet, with all that, I look at you and… I envy you. I envy your vitality, your spark, the way you light up a crowd. And the relationship you have with your brother-You are lucky to have so loyal a companion.”  
  
“Even when I had nothing, I had Ryuji,” Ann said softly. She glanced at Haru. “What about the Captain? You and her seem joined at the hip.”  
  
“It was not always like that,” Haru continued. “Just this past year, really, after the occupation began. It was… extremis. Proximity. When there’s danger around every corner, you take whatever company you can.”  
  
“So you two are stuck together, is what you’re saying.”  
  
“Yes,” Haru nodded. “Just like the rest of our merry band.”  
  
Ann sighed, gazing into the fireplace.  
  
“Chance may have brought us together,” Haru said, “but choice will keep us together. I will not demand that you follow me into danger merely on the promise of payment when it’s all said and done. But if you will place your trust in me, then…”  
  
Haru sighed, shaking her head.  
  
“...I digress. My point is… if you must leave, I will not blame you. But if we are, indeed, ‘stuck together’...” Haru exhaled. “Growing up, there were not many girls my own age in the royal court. I was hoping we could be… friends.”  
  
Ann fixed her eyes forward, pressing her lips into a line, saying nothing.  
  
“You’re right about me, Ann,” Haru said. “I seek my throne, in part, to return to a life of plenty. But as Queen, I intend to share that bounty with my people. I seek a world where no one, down to the smallest, weakest, most sickly of us- none of us shall know loneliness, hunger, or cold.”  
  
Haru sighed deeply. “...A lofty ambition, I know. I may not bring warmth to all my people. But I can for you.”  
  
Ann blinked, suddenly feeling Haru’s royal crimson cloak draped around her shoulders. She looked up, running the luxurious fabric between her fingers.  
  
“You can’t give me this,” Ann blurted out.  
  
“Why not?” Haru shrugged, smiling. “I bear the Fire Emblem. I do not fear the cold. And, besides… I find red is more your color, than mine. Good night, Ann.”  
  
Haru smiled, serene, and turned to leave.  
  
“Wait!” Ann called, pulling a bundle of fabric from her pack. She pressed the bundle into Haru’s arms.  
  
“Here,” Ann said. “Ryuji got me this for our first show, years ago. I don’t know why I kept it- sentiment, I guess. But it’s too short for me now, so… it’s yours.”  
  
Haru unfurled the bundle, curious.  
  
“It’s been awhile, and the color’s faded in the wash,” Ann said. “Is that okay?”  
  
Haru draped the shawl over her shoulders, the fabric framing her figure with a veil of what was once a vivid crimson, but was now a pale, floral pink.  
  
Haru’s eyes shone like the ring on her finger.  
  
“It’s perfect,” she said, and smiled.  
  
~*~  
  
Haru stepped out, still aglow with the satisfaction of getting to start over with Ann. She hummed to herself, bright and inexplicably blushy, swelling with confidence and pride. She talked to someone her own age! _Without_ Makoto’s help! She could scarcely believe it.  
  
Unfortunately, a gloved hand around Haru’s shoulder cut short the afterglow. Haru yelped as the hooded figure from before- Strider- shoved her into a room and pulled the door shut behind her.  
  
“You draw far too much attention to yourself, Miss _Haruka_ !” they hissed.  
  
Haru stared, clutching Ann’s shawl tighter around her shoulders.  
  
“What do you want?” she murmured.  
  
“A little more caution from you; that is no trinket you carry.”  
  
“I carry nothing.”  
  
“Indeed,” Strider frowned. They gazed out the window, watching the street below. Hooded, and with a scarf tied around their nose and mouth, Haru could only just make out their eyes.  
  
“Who are you?” Haru asked.  
  
Strider glanced at her. “...Are you frightened?”  
  
Haru swallowed hard. “...Yes.”  
  
“Not nearly frightened enough. I know what hunts you,” Strider looked up at the sound of footsteps in the hall. They whirled around, drawing their sword, just as the door burst open and Haru’s companions spilled through.  
  
“Let ‘er go!” Ryuji demanded. “Or I’ll have your ass for breakfast!”  
  
Makoto and Ann’s eyes flicked between Haru and each other for a brief moment of solidarity. Strider simply smirked beneath their mask and sheathed their sword.  
  
“You have a stout heart,” Strider said. “But that alone won’t save you. You can no longer wait for the Rebels, princess. They’re coming.”  
  
~*~  
  
Imperial boots crunched frozen mud underfoot. Sergeant Mishima’s first instinct was to spread out and to search for survivors- but the grisly scene before him more than spoke for itself.  
  
Inquisitor Thorn smacked her riding crop into her palm, glaring up at the inert, frozen husk of the assassin. It stood like a sculpture in the center of camp, as if to stand vigil over the dozen Imperials who were holding its leash. One dozen dead Imperials. One dozen failures.  
  
Thorn cried out in a rage and smashed the assassin over onto its back. Its bonds exploded in a spray of chipped ice, and she screamed and cursed, kicking the assassin’s metal husk and wailing like a child throwing a tantrum. Her soldiers stood, silently sharing glances.  
  
Thorn took a deep breath, reaching up and trailing her fingers through her long, carrot-red hair. She twisted the ring around her finger, and lights flickered through the seams of the assassin’s armor. It shuddered, and rose, like a marionette held taut on invisible strings.  
  
“I did not give you permission to stop,” she seethed, before turning and barking at the squad. “Men!”  
  
“Yes, ser!”  
  
“Our tracker needs a fresh scent,” Thorn smiled dangerously. “Who among you has faced the princess or her companions?”  
  
“I-I have, ser,” a trooper spoke up. “The stage witch. The Firestarter? I held her by the hair.”  
  
Mishima sighed and closed his eyes. No… No, you idiot…  
  
The trooper let out a bone-chilling scream as the assassin’s arm blades emerged from his back. The assassin lifted him above its head, wailing and crying all the while. There was a sickening, wet crunch- and the assassin ripped the poor trooper in two, drenching itself in a ghastly spray of blood.  
  
Mishima flinched, fighting tears as blood spattered against his visor. The Inquisitor stood, unfazed, gore dripping from her chin and her hair.  
  
“His contribution to the Empire will be remembered,” she said coldly. She turned and clapped a fist to her breast.  
  
“Ave Umbra!” she barked.  
  
Her men returned her salute.  
  
“We welcome the night!” they chorused.  
  
The assassin seized and convulsed. The trooper’s blood seeped into the seams of the assassin’s armor, and a new unblinking eye formed within its visor, shining with a hellish, blood-red light.  
  
The assassin bounded into the darkness on its too-long legs. Thorn lifted her hand and watched it go. The shimmering tracery on her ring formed a luminous white arrow heading east. She glanced up at Mishima and smirked.  
  
Mishima swallowed hard, but said nothing.  
  
“There will be nowhere left to hide,” Thorn said, eager, as she ushered the squad forward into the dark.  
  
~*~  
  
The party did not wait for the assassin to find them. They snatched moments of rest, packed what meager provisions they could carry, and set off, following Strider away from the main road and into the wild. Food, a moment’s rest, and new, fleeting peace between Haru and Ann did much to lift the party’s spirits. But they were still being hunted, a killer at their heels, being led into the wild unknown.  
  
“How do we know this Strider is a friend of the crown?” Makoto whispered, as they trudged along.  
  
Haru shook her head. “We have no choice but to trust them.”  
  
“Uh, we have plenty of choices besides trusting them,” Ann cut in.  
  
“Their name is known to the Rebellion,” Yusuke offered, “and I can sense their sincerity through the River. The River cannot tell a lie.”  
  
“You mean like when the River couldn’t sense that armored freak was coming?” Akira wondered.  
  
Yusuke frowned, thoughtful. “...Yes. That is concerning…”  
  
Strider stopped, and turned to the group.  
  
“I assure you, if you are friends of the crown, then you are friends of mine. However, I will not ask you to follow me blindly- at least not without a proper introduction.”  
  
Strider reached up, pushed back their hood and pulled down the scarf tied around their mouth, revealing yet another familiar face.  
  
“Among the Rebels, I am ‘the Sparrow’,” Strider began, smiling, “but among friends, I am-”  
  
~*~  
  
“Shiho!” Ann squealed, all but diving onto Shiho’s lap and peppering her face with kisses.  
  
“You don’t know each other!” Ryuji hissed. “Stay in character!”  
  
“Sorry, sorry!” Shiho giggled, tucking her chin over Ann’s shoulder. “Um… ‘Hello, Miss Sorceress. You have very striking eyes-’”  
  
“Oh, forget it,” Makoto waved, laughing. “Forget it, we’ve lost her.”  
  
“That’s fine,” Futaba shrugged, smiling. “I think that’s a good place to stop for tonight.”  
  
“Agreed,” Yusuke nodded. “Ah, and Yuuki apologizes for his absence tonight. I believe he needed to write a paper.”  
  
“God, what a loser,” Ryuji teased.  
  
“Yes, how awful, a student actually studying,” Makoto rolled her eyes.  
  
“Oh!” Haru chimed in. “If we’re done for tonight, would anyone care for more curry?”  
  
“Oooh, I would!”  
  
“Oh, yeah! Ryuji, get me some?”  
  
“Get your own!”  
  
“I would, but see, I have a cat on top of me…” Shiho giggled, and Ann darted in and stole another kiss.  
  
“Alright, kids, listen up!” Sojiro said above the din. He reached over and tapped at a framed sign hanging on the wall. “I’m glad you kids are having fun, but if you’re going to have this many people in my house every week, I just want to go over the ground rules, okay?”  
  
“Okay, _Dad_ ,” Futaba groaned.  
  
“In case anyone needs reminding!” Sojiro lectured, in full dad mode. “Number one: No making out in this house. You take that shit next door, alright? Like this, right here-”  
  
Sojiro thumped Ann on the head and she pouted up at him, Shiho giggling all the while.  
  
“Keep it PG, please? Nobody wants to see you swappin’ spit.”  
  
“I kinda do,” Futaba chimed in.  
  
“Agreed,” Makoto mumbled.  
  
“We’ll try our best, sir,” Shiho smiled.  
  
“Uh-huh. Now, rule number two: No making out on the first floor of Leblanc. That’s a place of business. People eat there. I don’t want anybody making a mess.”  
  
“What kind of _animals_ do you think we are?” Haru asked sweetly.  
  
Ann snorted. “Haru, _you_ don’t get to talk.”  
  
“And number three,” Sojiro pushed on. “No making out when there are customers waiting!”  
  
Ryuji threw his hands up, indignant. “That was _one time!_ ”  
  
“Got it? Good!” Sojiro clapped his hands together. “Alright, now you kids all get home safe, you hear me?”  
  
There was a chorus of affirmatives, and Sojiro nodded, satisfied, before wandering upstairs. The Sakura household grew warm with post-session chatter and the clink of curry plates being refilled.  
  
“Excuse me, Haru?” Yusuke said, finding Haru in the bustle. “I wanted to say- excellent speech, today.”  
  
“Thank you!” Haru cooed. “That reminds me. What were you and Akira doing while Ann and I were having our little moment?”  
  
“Making out, probably,” Ann grinned.  
  
Akira rolled his eyes. “Oh, like you and Haru were being sooooooo _chaste_ .”  
  
“We were!” Ann huffed.  
  
“Please,” Futaba teased, her chin in her hand. “Discussing your tragic backstories while staring into a fireplace? You two might as well go out onto the terrace and look at the moon!”  
  
“That _does_ sound nice…” Shiho nodded sagely.  
  
A round of phone alarms buzzed through the group- the reminder for the last train out of Yongen-jaya.  
  
“Who are you staying with tonight?” Akira asked, as Ann was shrugging on her coat.  
  
“Shiho, Makoto, and Haru,” Ann purred. “It’s gonna be a girls’ night!”  
  
“What the fuck!” Futaba exploded. “What, am I not girl enough for girl’s night?!”  
  
“You’re a girl?!” Ryuji gasped, laughing when Futaba thumped him on the head.  
  
“Ugh! This is so not fair!” Futaba pouted. “Ann, you can’t just make out with _everybody!_ ”  
  
“I mean,” Akira cut in. “She can try.”  
  
“She can, it’s just a bitch to schedule,” Ryuji said.  
  
“It sounds like somebody’s upset they have yet to be penciled in,” Yusuke teased.  
  
“That’s it!” Futaba threw up her arms. “Who wants to make out with me? I am now accepting makeout applications!”  
  
“No making out in this house!” Sojiro’s voice drifted downstairs.  
  
“Oh, go to a bar, Dad!” Futaba snapped. “We can’t all be like _you!_ ’  
  
“OOOOOOOOOOOH!”  
  
The group laughed together, shared one last round of hugs, and then filed out onto the streets of Yongen-jaya, filling the quiet evening with light and warmth.  
  
_“You guys always have so much fun,”_ Kana said, over video chat. _“I’m jealous.”_ _  
_ _  
_ “Then get your butt on a train to Tokyo,” Futaba said. “...We could make out!”  
  
_“But the rules, Taba! The rules!”_  
  
Futaba cackled. She said goodnight, blew Kana a kiss, and then shut her laptop. She looked up, and saw Akira sitting beside her, vibrating with laughter. Futaba’s lips curled into an impish grin.  
  
“Fucking brutal,” Akira grinned, snickering.  
  
“Yeah, I got him good, huh?” Futaba beamed. “Joke’s on us, though. Now _we’re_ stuck with the dishes.”  
  
~*~


	4. Into the Woods

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “The Empire’s assassin has been beaten back- for now. The Rebel, Sparrow, guides your party into the Wild, where new allies- and new enemies- await…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things are starting to heat up! I hope you guys are ready! =D
> 
> Per request, the races and classes of the party and some notable NPCs. Do note, though, I'm not following D&D to the letter- I'm taking plenty of inspiration from places like Fire Emblem and Lord of the Rings. For instance, "pixies" are more "hobbits with fairy wings" than the six-inch-tall fairies they are according to D&D. Just roll with it!
> 
> Akira - Tiefling - Rogue  
> Ryuji - Half-Orc - Fighter/Sorcerer (Illusion)  
> Ann - Half-Elf - Sorceress (Illusion)  
> Yusuke - Elf - Monk/Wizard (Divination)  
> Haru - Human - Cleric  
> Makoto - Human - Paladin  
> Shiho - Elf - Ranger
> 
> Inquisitor Thorn - Halfling - Fighter  
> Inquisitor Nyx - Tiefling - Warlock
> 
> I hope you all enjoy the read!

~*~  
  
Scheduling became an issue.  
  
They suspected it would, ever since Makoto’s chart made their tangled web of relationships official, ever since Ann began the weekly tradition of Sleepover Saturdays and saw how hard it was just to get her, Shiho, Makoto, Akira, and Ryuji together. Getting a bunch of college-aged kids with different schedules together was a logistical nightmare. It was hard enough for Ann to do just five of them when she, Shiho and Makoto practically lived together. Eight? Eight was even harder.  
  
So when they somehow managed to get _eleven_ of them together in the attic at Leblanc, Futaba knew it was going to be a magical night.  
  
“We’re _not._ _Having_. An _orgy_ ,” Akira said, pinching the bridge of his nose.  
  
Futaba rolled her eyes. “Look, I’m just saying, it’s the perfect opportunity.”  
  
Futaba squeaked as Akira thumped her on the head. She glowered up at him and pouted, sliding tables and chairs around.  
  
“Poor baby,” Akira said, as they tried to get eleven seats out of a wooden pew bench, a worn-out couch, Akira’s bed, and half a dozen mismatched wooden chairs. “Why do all our friends have to be so _attractive_?”  
  
“You’re tellin’ me,” Futaba huffed. “And I’m not a _baby_.”  
  
“I know.”  
  
“I’m _not_.”  
  
“I _know_.”  
  
“Kids!” Sojiro called up the stairs. “Your friends are here!”  
  
“Which ones?” Akira called back.  
  
Downstairs, Sojiro grinned, setting his mug on the counter. “All of them, I think.”  
  
Moments later, Akira heard the tell-tale pitter-patter coming up the steps, and stepped aside just in time for Kana to dive into Futaba’s arms. They laughed and spun, giggling like schoolgirls. Kana leaned in and gave Futaba a shy peck on the lips, before bonking her forehead against hers, practically swooning.  
  
“You made it!” Futaba squealed.  
  
“I did,” Kana murmured, smiling. “Hey, player one.”  
  
“Hey, player two. Welcome back to Tokyo.”  
  
“It’s good to be back,” Kana beamed. She looked over at Akira and nodded. “Bro.”  
  
“Ladybug,” Akira nodded.  
  
Akira grunted as a blur slammed into him and toppled him over onto his bed, his glasses flying off. He groped for his glasses and set them back on his face, resolving the blonde blur lying on top of him. Akira rolled his eyes.  
  
“ _God_ , Ryuji,” Akira grumbled.  
  
“Sorry,” Ryuji grinned, sheepish. “You ready for tonight?”  
  
“Look who’s here!” Ann announced as she came up the steps with Shiho, carrying bags of convenience store snacks. She saw Ryuji and Akira sprawled out on Akira’s bed, and snickered. “Geez, Ryuji. You’re never that happy to see _me_.”  
  
“Yes, he is,” Shiho giggled.  
  
“Yes, he is,” Akira echoed, grinning.  
  
“Aki-kun?” A gentle voice drifted up the stairs.  
  
“What’s up, Haru?” Akira called.  
  
Haru appeared on the stairs with Makoto over her shoulder, both of them carrying big tupperware bins.  
  
“Hello everyone!” Haru chirped. “Mako-chan and I brought salad and stir-fry!”  
  
“Do you mind if we stick these in the fridge, Akira?” Makoto asked.  
  
Akira nodded and waved, the two girls trading places with a tower of soda cans.  
  
“I didn’t forget the soda this time!” Mishima said, poking his head out from behind the bundle in his arms. He glanced at the slowly growing cuddle pile in the attic, Kana and Futaba’s petite forms getting cozy on the computer chair in the corner, Ann, Ryuji, and Shiho helping Akira unfurl spare futons to cover the floorboards in a makeshift carpet.  
  
“Oh, man,” Mishima whistled, the boxes in his arms joining a shelf full of of snacks and drinks. “It’s a party up here!”  
  
One by one, the group started coming together. Makoto and Haru claimed the couch; Ann and Shiho took the pew bench, and they scooted up so Ann could surreptitiously reach under the table and take Makoto’s hand; Ryuji and Mishima playfought over who would get to sit next to Shiho; Akira sat on the edge of his bed, sticking his tongue out at Morgana; Morgana just sighed, if a cat could be said to sigh, and stretched out on the windowsill, basking in the fading sunlight. Kana took a seat in the corner, tapping at the computer Futaba had made for Akira during his year away from Tokyo, her lap piling up with binders, notes, and campaign docs. Futaba sat at the head of the table, making her computer chair her throne.  
  
The door to Leblanc opened and shut with a jingle of chimes, and two last stragglers came up the stairs, in hushed, rapt conversation.  
  
“Pardon our lateness,” Yusuke said primly, a portfolio tucked under his arm. “Tonight’s backgrounds took a little longer than I anticipated.”  
  
“Hello, everyone,” his companion said, an elegant young woman with a length of braided cord in her hair. “I don’t know many of you as well as I would like. I look forward to our evening together.”  
  
Mishima gawked, intrigued. He glanced at Akira beside him.  
  
“Is that…?” he wondered, while Akira smiled and nodded.  
  
Hifumi stiffly took a seat beside Futaba near the head of the table. Her eyes met Makoto’s for a long moment, and she relaxed, her lips easing into a smile.  
  
Yusuke chose a seat at the foot of the table, between Mishima and Akira. He handed his portfolio to Akira for safekeeping, but not before withdrawing a large canvas and setting it out in the center of the table. The gathered group gasped in awe at Yusuke’s vivid portrayal of gloomy, perilous wilderness.  
  
“There’s just a whole mess of you here tonight,” Sojiro said, appearing at the top of the steps. “You kids alright up here?”  
  
“Yes, sir,” they chorused.  
  
Sojiro chuckled. “I’ve left you kids a pot of curry in the fridge. Now, I’m gonna need that pot by tomorrow- so you’d better finish every last bite, you hear me?”  
  
“Okay, _Dad_ ,” Futaba rolled her eyes.  
  
“Brat,” Sojiro said fondly. He glanced at Akira and grinned. “I’m locking up. You kids have fun.”  
  
Sojiro disappeared down the steps. Akira pulled out a binder and started passing out character sheets. Mishima and Ryuji rifled through the snack shelf and started tossing Pocky and Hello Panda into waiting hands. Hifumi carefully set a cardboard box on the table and lifted out a set of meticulously hand-carved, hand-painted wooden figurines.  
  
Ryuji held his figure up to the light. He whistled, long and low. “Damn, Yusuke. You _made_ these?”  
  
“I’m afraid I am an amateur sculptor at best,” Yusuke preened, a hand to his chest. “However, I will not back down from a challenge. And I endeavor to be a master of every medium.”  
  
“They look amazing, Yusuke,” Makoto said, examining her figure. “Thank you.”  
  
“Oh, man,” Ann said, grinning. “These look _way_ better than color-coded yen coins.”  
  
“Aww, Yu-kun!” Haru chirped, holding up her figure. “Look at me! You made me so cute!”  
  
Yusuke chuckled. “It wasn’t difficult…”  
  
“Alright!” Futaba clapped her hands together. “Listen up, you gay disasters! Today is our fourth weekly Tabletop Tuesday, which means we’ve been doing this stuff for a whole month!”  
  
Cheers chorused down the table. Futaba preened.  
  
“Yes, thank you, it _was_ a great idea, wasn’t it?” Futaba beamed. “To celebrate our first monthiversary, we’ve got some special guests.”  
  
Futaba hugged Kana from behind, resting her chin on Kana’s head. “We’ve got my co-DM, Kana, looking way cuter and more huggable than her Discord icon…”  
  
“Taba,” Kana blushed, swatting Futaba away.  
  
“And,” Futaba thumped a hand into Hifumi’s back. “We also have Hifumi, who’s gonna be on enemy NPC duty.”  
  
Hifumi smiled dangerously. Ryuji blinked.  
  
“...Well, we’re dead,” he snickered.  
  
Futaba flashed an impish, manic grin. “I’ve got my girls with me and I’m bringing out the big guns! You guys ready for our monthiversary marathon session?! Are you guys even _ready_ for _me_?!”  
  
Kana shook a thin plastic grid overlay over Yusuke’s canvas background. Dice, in plastic cases or drawstring pouches, thudded onto the table- clattering when Futaba slammed her palms down.  
  
“The board is set!” Futaba declared. “ _Let’s roll!_ ”  
  
~*~  
  
Rumor said that these woods were haunted.  
  
Rumor said that a great sorceress lived in these woods- an Elf witch of great and terrible power. Rumor said that all those who look upon her fall under her spell, and are never seen again.  
  
These were, of course, only rumors. The whispers of the frightened, the superstitious, and, occasionally, simply the bored.  
  
Regardless of the rumors, there were indeed voices in these woods. The air filled with whispers, of hushed secrets and muffled voices. The party exchanged wordless glances, scanning the trees in anxious silence, and followed Shiho through the twilight gloom.  
  
Haru watched as shadows flitted through the trees, catching glimpses of beady, glinting eyes in the dark. She nervously twisted the Fire Emblem around her finger, pulling Ann’s pink shawl tighter around her shoulders. Makoto nudged an elbow against hers. Their eyes met for just a moment, and Haru managed a smile.  
  
Akira and Yusuke trudged behind them. Akira had to make a conscious effort to navigate tree roots and undergrowth without tripping, while Yusuke, somehow, took every poised step without so much as a stumble. Akira had his hands stuffed in his pockets, gazing warily into the darkness, while Yusuke was serene and unreadable, as always.  
  
Ann and Ryuji brought up the rear of the group, Ann looking resplendent in Haru’s royal crimson cloak. The Lions were the last bit of light in the gloom; but even they were quiet, somber.  
  
The party was weary, having caught only a few fitful hours of sleep before fleeing into the woods with what meager provisions they could carry. Behind them, they knew, were the agents of the Empire, still in pursuit. Before them, a haunted forest, and a night giving way to a foggy, morning gloom.  
  
Shiho led the way, silent, inscrutable. The carved wooden idol around her neck shimmered silver in the early morning light. Every so often, she would reach up and touch the charm, as if for luck, or for courage. Even Shiho was spooked.  
  
There was something about these woods. They were… maybe not haunted, but certainly inhuman. Uninviting, unwelcoming. As if the trees themselves were turning up their noses at an unwelcome guest.  
  
Sound carried strangely in this place. When the party spoke amongst themselves, their voices sounded muffled, distant. But the sound of their footsteps was shockingly clear, echoing strangely through the trees, joining the constant, ghostly murmuring and the flitting of distant wings.  
  
“What is this place?” Haru wondered.  
  
“Your intention was to contact the rebel cell at the riverside town of Hawk’s Landing,” Shiho said. “What if I told you there was a closer cell we could contact? Here, in the forest?”  
  
Haru shook her head. “There are no other human settlements this far from the capital.”  
  
Shiho smiled slyly. “No. Not human.”  
  
They reached a clearing in the woods, where it parted around a main road boarded with rough-cut planks. Shiho hastily ushered the group into cover, seeing silhouettes on the road. Between the fog, and the strange echoes through the trees, she only noticed once they were right on top of them.  
  
There was a man, sitting astride some sort of motorized carriage- a tiefling, by his horns and complexion. He had stacks of crates in the back of his truck, covered with a tarp to keep out the damp. Below him, ranks of Imperial guardsmen were spread across the road, blocking his advance. The tiefling, sprawled in his seat, seemed less than concerned.  
  
“What seems to be the problem, officer?” he drawled, in a voice that had clearly uttered those words countless times before.  
  
“Inspection,” said the sergeant through his skull visor.  
  
“If you wanna check out my papers, I’ve got ‘em all right here,” the tiefling replied. He opened up a pack on the seat beside him and began rummaging.  
  
“That’s a lot of men and a lot of crossbows just to collect a few tariffs,” Makoto whispered, huddled behind a tree trunk.  
  
“Leave it to the Empire to get in the working man’s way,” Akira muttered.  
  
“Quiet,” Shiho hissed.  
  
The tiefling handed over a bundle of documents. The sergeant took a long time peering at the papers, either out of suspicion or, more likely, due to literacy problems.  
  
“Name?” he snapped.  
  
“Eli,” the tiefling replied.  
  
“Destination?”  
  
“Larksnettle.”  
  
“Cargo?”  
  
“Magicite.”  
  
“And you mean to tell me that your little delivery is fully on the level?” the sergeant sneered. “That this isn’t a smuggling run in the dead of night?”  
  
“Sunrise is sooner than you think, ser,” Eli shrugged. “You gonna fault me for getting an early start on the day’s deliveries?”  
  
“Ser!” a trooper called out, from the bed of Eli’s truck. “This magicite, ser. It’s fire-aligned!”  
  
The sergeant’s glare was apparent even through his skull-visored helm.  
  
“Do you want to tell me what you’re doing such volatile cargo, _peasant_?”  
  
“Getting it to Larksnettle before winter comes in full force?” Eli said, utterly at ease despite being surrounded by Imperial troops. “Those stones are gonna be keeping fireplaces strong and tucked into gloves and boots to keep out frostbite. I don’t know anything about any _military_ applications.”  
  
“I’ll say you don’t,” the sergeant spat, thrusting Eli’s papers back into his hands. “Get out of this vehicle. We’re seizing your cargo on behalf of the Umbra Empire.”  
  
A bird chirped above them, echoing strangely through the trees. Shiho went stiff, eyes searching the fog.  
  
There was a whistle, and a dense, wet impact. The sergeant went still. He staggered back a few steps before thudding onto his back, blood oozing from his visor and an arrow through his eye.  
  
The clearing exploded into motion. Imperial troopers crouched and took up braced firing stances, shooting blindly into the fog. Arrows whistled past, punching through mail and hurling troopers off their feet. The air filled with the sounds of battle, strangled cries of pain, barked orders, the sickly and pungent stench of death. Through the sudden maelstrom of violence, Eli sat, impassive, up on his carriage. He took a sliver of fire magicite from his coat, lit his pipe, and took a long draw, watching the battle unfold without a care in the world.  
  
“We’ve stayed here too long,” Shiho murmured.  
  
She turned to gather the party together. She stopped in her tracks.  
  
Shiho exhaled, raising her hands above her head. Shadows perched in the trees around them, arrows nocked and ready. A spear blade lay leveled at her chest. As Shiho turned, the wooden icon around her neck shimmered silver in the light, and the spear blade abruptly withdrew itself.  
  
“Sparrow?” came a voice.  
  
A woman stepped into the light, shouldering her spear. She raised a hand, and her comrades surrounding the party followed suit, lowering their weapons. Two other women emerged from the shadows, also shouldering spears. Each of them wore long tunics under their breastplates in colors that matched their hair- green, blue, and red. Each of them bore a badge of a white bird on a black field; and, most strikingly, each had iridescent, leaf-shaped wings flitting at their backs.  
  
“Who are they…?” Haru wondered, trying her hardest not to stare.  
  
“The guardians of this forest,” Shiho said, her voice low. “The Whitewings.”  
  
“What are you doing here, Sparrow?” asked the woman in green. It wasn’t a threat, but it wasn’t exactly friendly. “And who are your… guests?”  
  
Shiho swallowed hard. She glanced at Haru, who nodded.  
  
“...The retinue of Corona’s lost princess,” Shiho said.  
  
An intrigued murmur swept across the group. Some of the hooded archers looming above exchanged curious glances.  
  
“The Princess of Light...” whispered the woman in red.  
  
“She’s alive…?” wondered her companion, in blue.  
  
Haru squirmed, feeling the weight of eyes upon her. Shiho stepped forward.  
  
“Paola,” she said, bowing her head in deference to each of the trio in turn. “Kat. Estelle. I humbly request an audience with the Lady of the Wood, and sanctuary within your lands.”  
  
“Sanctuary to outsiders is not mine to give,” Paola, the woman in green, said gently. “However, an audience, I can grant you.”  
  
She tapped the haft of her spear against the ground, and at once, her entourage leapt into flight, iridescent wings buzzing as they vanished through the fog. Paola, along with her fellow lancers, stayed on foot.  
  
“The Matriarch awaits you,” Paola said, gesturing with her spear. “Welcome to the Feywood.”  
  
~*~  
  
In Hawk’s Landing, southeast of Larksnettle and its sprawling woods, another meeting was taking place.  
  
The grand river Hyperion bisected the continent of Cardinal, linking the kingdom of Corona to the north with its neighbor, Onyx, to the south. Before the Conquest, Onyxian traders would ferry ore down the river to Corona and return with furs and livestock, using their cutting-edge steam engines to fight their way back upstream. Now, the river Hyperion traded mainly in Imperial troops- yet another servant of the Umbra Empire.  
  
Hawk’s Landing, sitting astride the river Hyperion on the Corona-Onyx border, was swelling with Imperial troops. The citizens kept their heads down and tried their best to go about business as usual- but nothing could silence the fearful whispers. The Empire was planning something. Something big.  
  
A convoy was assembling on the city’s cobblestone streets, a train of a dozen steam-trucks, each one large enough to ferry a squad of Imperial troopers, flanking a huge mobile platform shrouded in a canvas tarp. It was the size of a railcar- not that anybody knew what a railcar or railroad was, outside the Empire- and it was the centerpiece of this entire operation.  
  
One of them, anyway. The other one was still asleep.  
  
Sent to fetch her was a tiefling, with a midnight-blue complexion and eyes that glinted an unnerving milky white in the twilight gloom. She wore a long, dark coat, with a gleaming sickle hanging from her belt. On her breast, she wore a badge in the shape of a stylized letter ‘ **I** ’.  
  
The Inquisitor cleared her throat, rapping her knuckles on the doorframe.  
  
“Professor? Excuse me, Professor?”  
  
A mass of frizzy, curly hair lay motionless on the cot before her. It sat, like a gigantic burr caught on one’s clothes after a trek through the woods. For a moment, the burr turned, and a pair of deep brown eyes squinted up at the door. They promptly rolled over and pulled the covers up to their ears.  
  
The Inquisitor sighed. “Professor Cross. The convoy is ready to deploy at your command.”  
  
The professor swiped a pair of spectacles off of her nightstand and perched them on her nose. She looked up at her partner, blinking.  
  
“The convoy,” she echoed.  
  
“Yes, Professor.”  
  
“For the…”  
  
“For the weapons test.”  
  
“...That was _today_?”  
  
The Inquisitor pinched the bridge of her nose. “... _Yes_ , Professor.”  
  
“Well, this is the first I’ve heard about it,” Cross muttered lightly. The Inquisitor sighed, but couldn’t find the strength to argue.  
  
The Inquisitor stood at the door, hands clasped behind her back, as Cross went about her morning routine with aggravating leisure.  
  
“Professor, if we could make haste,” she began, watching Cross poring over her collection of earrings. “There have been disturbing reports of Rebel activity in this area. Patrols slaughtered, fugitives at large. Just this morning, an entire garrison was wiped out during a routine cargo inspection-”  
  
“My dear,” Cross cut her off, smiling placidly. “You cannot rush perfection. Do not concern yourself with the petulance of a conquered people throwing tantrums. This prototype will silence their squabbling. And what’s more, it will invite a… discussion, in the capital.”  
  
Cross turned and affectionately tapped a finger against one of the Inquisitor’s horns.  
  
“This demonstration will show that Miranda Cross has a place further up the chain of Imperial Development than crafting steam engines to shuttle ore. And when the time comes for recognition and reward, I will not forget the patience and understanding of those who stood beside me, nor fail to recognize their contributions to the Empire. Are we clear?”  
  
The Inquisitor smiled, and nodded. “Yes, Professor.”  
  
Cross smiled, her glasses glinting in the light.  
  
“Then let us get to work.”  
  
Cross stepped out into the morning gloom. To a man, the column of assembled Imperial troopers stood to attention in a ringing clash of armor and boots. She smiled and preened, drinking in the attention. Once this project of hers came to light, there would be worthier eyes upon her. Perhaps even those of the Emperor himself.  
  
For now, though, she would settle for the milky-white of the one who’d stood by her from the very beginning of this hidden endeavor- her bodyguard, and secret-keeper, Inquisitor Ophelia Nyx.  
  
Cross gave a curt nod to the assembled soldiers before letting Nyx take command.  
  
“We travel west!” Nyx declared. “Ignite and move out!”  
  
There was a sound like rolling thunder as a dozen steam engines rumbled to life. Imperial troops filed onto the benches in the raised beds of their trucks, seated in facing rows. Nyx herself took Cross’ offered hand and clambered onto the project platform, the prototype sitting behind them, shrouded under its tarp. Their engine ignited with a hiss of steam, and they rumbled onto the road and away, leaving Hawk’s Landing and the river Hyperion behind them.  
  
“How did you choose the target, ma’am?” Nyx wondered.  
  
Cross shrugged, leaning back in her seat. “It’s suitable for a first test. It’s small, but not so small so as to go unnoticed. More importantly, there are magicite mines in the hills above it. Abandoned, now. But they can be reopened. Soon enough, we will have all the magicite we could need- certainly enough to fuel another round of tests.”  
  
Nyx nodded. “Very shrewd, Professor.”  
  
“You have a friend on assignment there, do you not?” Cross wondered. “Victoria Something-or-other?”  
  
“Victoria Thorn,” Nyx sniffed, smiling ruefully. “We went to Academy together. Though, I’m not sure you would call us ‘friends’...”  
  
~*~  
  
The Feywood was no ordinary forest. Through the fog, down the winding path, it appeared, abruptly and incongruously, as if it were cut from some other world and carelessly slapped on top of the mundane wood. From one moment to the next, the woods transformed from a skeletal boreal forest with snow draped ghostlike over the trees, to a warm, leafy wood filled with dancing lights and the glint of curious, watchful eyes.  
  
All at once, the party was suddenly surrounded by soaring villages built into the very trees, hide tents set atop heavy wooden platforms raised above the ground, the platforms buttressed by tree trunks and thick support struts sunk into the earth. Colored lights gathered like fireflies in the canopy, or peeked out of alcoves and tree roots. Sprites, pixies- the tiny, size-shifting cousins of the fey who escorted them now.  
  
The ground was dry, and the air was warm- a tiny little bubble of springtime against the rest of the forest’s slush and snow. Stepping into the domain of the Fey was like stepping through a stage curtain, going from the dreary dark of backstage to the theater’s gaudy sea of light and color. The Whitewings ushered the party into the encampment’s large, central tent- and again, it felt like stepping out of the fog and into the sun, awash with dazzling lights.  
  
It was like being put on a stage. Or, perhaps, on trial.  
  
They stood before the Lady of the Wood- a feyri woman in violet whose wings shimmered a luminous autumnal orange and red. Vivid red hair spilled down her shoulders, framing amber eyes, regal cheekbones, and a face pinched with displeasure.  
  
“Sparrow,” Matriarch Sibyl said, without any preamble or introduction, “you disappoint me.”  
  
Some, like Ann and Ryuji, couldn’t help but continue to gawk at their surroundings through the war tent’s numerous skylights. Some, like Akira and Makoto, gazed warily at the numerous armed guards lining the interior of the tent. Yusuke just stood, quiet, contemplative. But Haru watched, anxious and attentive, as Sibyl’s words settled like a slab of granite on Shiho’s shoulders.  
  
“You and your Rangers have done well by the Feywood in the past,” Sibyl continued. “Your aid in safeguarding this forest from the Empire has made you a friend of the Fey, with the privilege that entails. But today, you go too far. Today, you bring outsiders to my doorstep, and it is only through her kindness and naivete that my Captain has indulged your foolishness thus far.”  
  
Paola shrank under the Matriarch’s words, but said nothing. Sibyl’s amber eyes flicked over to Shiho, and she shuddered under the weight of her gaze.  
  
“What do you have to say for yourself, Sparrow?” Sibyl demanded. “Who so urgently demands an audience with the Hidden Wood?”  
  
Shiho bowed her head in deference.  
  
“Matriarch Sibyl,” Shiho said, swallowing hard, “may I present to you Haru Okumura… Princess of Corona.”  
  
“Your Majesty,” Haru bowed, clasping a hand over her heart. “I thank you for your welcome and hospitality in these trying times-”  
  
“‘Welcome’ is hardly the term I would use,” Sibyl said coldly. “It pleases me that the famed Princess of Light did not, in fact, perish during the Conquest- but your title is not one honored by the Fey. Speak your piece, and speak quickly, child. In this wood, you have no voice save that which I permit you.”  
  
Makoto’s eyes flashed. “How _dare_ you-!”  
  
“Mako, stop,” Haru took Makoto’s wrist and squeezed. She looked up at the Matriarch. “Your Majesty. I am Haru Okumura, the lost princess of Corona. I seek to reclaim my throne, and to oust the Umbra Empire from my lands. To this end, I seek to gather a coalition of like-minded souls, in order to fight the Empire on our own terms.”  
  
Sibyl gestured to the rest of the party.  
  
“You’re off to a meager start,” Sibyl said. “Do you mean to go to war with just the seven of you?”  
  
“No, Your Majesty,” Haru said. “I have gathered my retinue over the course of my travels. We began in the village of Larksnettle, and fled east, pursued by Imperial forces. Our intention was to reach the riverside town of Hawk’s Landing, make contact with the Rebel cell there, and then follow the river north towards the capital. It was Ser Sparrow who led us here rather than our original destination- but my objective has not changed. I seek to gather anyone and everyone who opposes the Empire into a unified Rebellion. Will you help us, Your Majesty?”  
  
Sibyl’s eyes grew flinty and hard. “...What makes you think the Fey would ever help _you_?”  
  
Haru faltered, taken aback. “We… we could be the founders of a full Rebel Alliance. Together, we could fight the Empire-”  
  
“We have fought the Empire,” Sibyl said coolly. “We’ve fought the Empire from the first moment of the Conquest. We have bled them for every step their soldiers have taken through our woods, and we will continue to do so, with or without you.”  
  
“What if you looked beyond your own borders?” Haru asked. “What if I asked you to join the fight for the liberation of all Corona?”  
  
The Matriarch was silent for a long time. She studied Haru carefully, her lips pressed into a line.  
  
“...You ask much of me and mine, child,” Sibyl said. “You ask the Fey to bleed for a human matter, and you offer precious little in exchange.”  
  
Haru took a deep breath.  
  
“I offer you what my father, King Kunizuka Okumura, could not,” Haru said. She met Sibyl’s eyes, and her voice rang with authority. “I offer you the sovereignty of your own Feyri nation, and the promise that, should you join the fight against the Umbra Empire, it will be as allies and equals. I offer you a land whose borders are protected by laws and the respect of your neighbors, not merely by bow, blade, or magicked ward. And I offer you, after the Empire has been pushed back and I take my seat as Queen… I offer you the promise of a lasting peace, between our nations, and our peoples.”  
  
Haru stepped forward, into a shaft of pale sunlight cast into the war tent by a skylight above. She raised her hand to the light, the Fire Emblem glinting on her finger. The light pooled in her hair and gathered around her form, until her whole body seemed to emanate a radiant golden glow.  
  
“This do I swear,” Haru said, shining like the sun from which her kingdom drew its crest. “On my word, on my blood, and in my deed.”  
  
Sibyl held Haru’s gaze. She exhaled, raising a hand to her lips.  
  
“...You certainly aren’t your father’s daughter,” Sibyl mused. Haru thought better of asking whether it was a compliment or not. Sibyl rose to her full height, raising a gnarled wooden staff in her hand, covered in climbing ivy.  
  
“Whitewings. Escort our guests to the canopy, there to await the judgment of the court.” Sibyl met Haru’s gaze one last time. “You have given us much to discuss.”  
  
Sibyl struck her scepter against the floor of the tent, echoing with finality. The Whitewings stepped forward and ushered the group away. Sibyl lowered her gaze, thoughtful, and didn’t watch them leave.  
  
The air grew heavy. Whatever happened to them now, it was in the Matriarch’s hands.  
  
~*~  
  
“That went well,” Ryuji chirped, somehow bright and cheery despite the oppressive mood.  
  
“Did it?” Ann grumbled, laying back on the platform and staring up at the lightening sky.  
  
The Whitewings had escorted the party up onto one of the many platforms nestled among the trees, overlooking the rest of the Feyri camp. Makoto had started out pacing, overcome with restlessness, but the platform’s ominous creaking beneath her boots turned her away from that idea. She sat heavily beside Haru, irritable, on edge. The rest of the party was similarly ill at ease.  
  
They weren’t under guard, but they were being watched. The silent ruling seemed to be that they weren’t to leave the platform; if nothing else, the sheer drop to the forest floor below was enough to deter thoughts of escape. Sibyl’s judgment was being formed. All they could do was wait.  
  
“They didn’t take our weapons,” Makoto mused, idle. “That was foolish of them.”  
  
“Of course they didn’t,” Ryuji spoke up. “We’re guests. We’re not prisoners.”  
  
“Aren’t we?” Ann asked, idly curling a lock of her hair around her finger. “We’re stuck up here until they let us go. Sure, they didn’t tie us up or anything. But they don’t have to.”  
  
Ann pointedly nodded towards the edge of the platform.  
  
“...I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I can make that jump. Not without breaking something important.”  
  
“We just need to be patient,” Haru said, though even she couldn’t disguise the nervous tremor in her voice. “The Matriarch just needs some time to consider my proposal.”  
  
“They’re going to sell us out,” Akira muttered darky, laying back on the platform and gazing up through the trees.  
  
“You’re a real ‘glass half full’ person, aren’t you?” Yusuke muttered, sitting cross-legged beside him.  
  
“Man, shut up,” Akira snapped, sitting up. “It’s thanks to you and _this_ little birdie-” He shot Shiho an acid look. “-that we’re stuck up this tree. Literally!”  
  
Shiho crossed her arms and looked away, leaning back against the tree trunk their platform was built around.  
  
“...I miscalculated,” Shiho admitted, heaving a sigh. “But your original objective would have brought you to a city even more firmly under Imperial control than Larksnettle. The Fey are enemies of the Empire-”  
  
“But they’re no friends of the crown!” Makoto shot back. She turned, glowering at Haru. “The Fey cannot be trusted, my lady. They’re fickle, selfish, insular creatures. Matriarch Sibyl said it herself- she cares only for her own borders. The Fey won’t get involved in human concerns!”  
  
“When the Empire marched into Corona and set foot in this forest, they _made_ it a Fey concern,” Haru said patiently. “The enemy of our enemy is our friend, after all.”  
  
“Or they’re just a different enemy,” Makoto muttered under her breath.  
  
Ryuji watched the heated exchange, his brow furrowed in concern. Morale must be at an all-time low if even the straitlaced Captain was mouthing off to her boss. He sighed, glancing over at Yusuke. He was meditating on the edge of the platform, heedless of the sheer drop before him.  
  
“What do you think, Skinny?” Ryuji asked. “You’ve been awful quiet.”  
  
Yusuke took a deep breath and sighed. He held out his cane in two hands, holding it over the edge of the platform as if he were using an oar to feel the current in a stream.  
  
“The River flows strangely,” Yusuke murmured, trouble. “Something is disturbing the current, like… ice flowing downstream.”  
  
“Thanks, you’ve been real helpful,” Akira muttered.  
  
“Dude, come on,” Ryuji chided. He glanced at Yusuke. “Anything else?”  
  
“I can feel them,” Yusuke said. “More than just a mere hunting party. The Empire is approaching, and they are moving in force and with purpose.”  
  
“Damn it,” Haru hissed. “We need to say something. We need to warn these people!”  
  
“I don’t know if they’re gonna listen…” Ann said, tugging at her ear. Ryuji looked up at her, blinking.  
  
“What are you doing?” he wondered.  
  
“I dropped one of my linkpearls out of sight down in the war tent,” Ann explained, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear.  
  
“What are they saying?” Makoto demanded. She shouldered her way past Haru and took Ann by the shoulders.  
  
“Whoa, easy! Easy!” Ann said, as Makoto stopped just short of outright shaking her. She made a face, her earring glinting strangely in the light. “...Bear with me here, I haven’t spoken Elvish since I was a kid…”  
  
Ann stood, frowning, her linkpearl shimmering beneath her thumb and forefinger. Eventually, she sighed, and shook her head.  
  
“...It doesn’t sound good,” she admitted, trailing her fingers through her hair. “I don’t think they’re feeling this alliance, princess. But I don’t think they’re gonna let us just walk out of here, either.”  
  
“I knew it!” Makoto snarled. She turned, barking orders. “Get up! We can still make it out of here if we hurry!”  
  
“Wait a second!” Ryuji protested. “Are we seriously going to fight our way out of here?”  
  
Yusuke grimaced, but said nothing. Ann looked up at Ryuji, hugging her arms to her chest.  
  
“...Ryuji… I’m... kind of with the Captain on this one.” Ann mumbled.  
  
“Thank you, sorceress,” Makoto exhaled, clapping a hand on Ann’s shoulder. “Someone here speaks sense.”  
  
“This can’t be the only way…!” Haru pleaded. “If I could just speak with the Matriarch again, perhaps I could-”  
  
“No, princess,” Makoto said, meeting Haru’s eyes. “I’m getting you out of here. I’m getting us all out of here, if I can manage it, but you, my lady, your life is paramount. Even if it means throwing away the last scraps of goodwill we have with the Fey.”  
  
“These are my _people_ , Mako!”  
  
“ _No, they’re not!_ ” Makoto snapped, so harshly that Haru flinched. “Under the laws of your father, the reigning king of Corona, the Fey are not your people, and this forest is not their land!”  
  
“I am not my father!” Haru all but shrieked, and now, it was Makoto’s turn to step back. Haru met her eyes, defiant, the Fire Emblem shining on her finger. “Lawful citizens or not, I will not abandon these people to the cruelty of the Empire without giving them a fighting chance!”  
  
Makoto grit her teeth. “Your father’s laws-”  
  
“ _Whom do you serve?!_ ” Haru demanded. “The law? The crown? Or do you serve _me_?”  
  
Haru’s voice rang through the air like a commandment. Makoto stared at her, speechless, working her jaw. Makoto staggered back, before falling to her knees, shaking. She bowed her head as low as she could go.  
  
“...I serve you, my lady…” Makoto said, her eyes wet. “...I’ve… I’ve always…”  
  
Haru dropped down and pulled Makoto into her arms.  
  
“...I know,” Haru breathed, reaching up and smoothing Makoto’s hair against her scalp. “...I know, Mako. And I’m sorry. So much has happened in so little time. It’s… It’s been a long night. But there will be longer nights to come.”  
  
Makoto nodded into Haru’s shoulder. They parted, holding each others’ eyes.  
  
“Are you with me, ser knight?” Haru asked gently.  
  
Makoto swallowed hard. “Always, my lady.”  
  
They shared a tender moment there on the platform, the sun peeking through the fog. Ann, Ryuji and Shiho drew in close around the duo, without any of them truly knowing why. Even Yusuke allowed a small smile to slip through his meditative calm.  
  
Only Akira stayed where he was, his face tight and unhappy.  
  
“They’re going to sell us out,” he muttered, spinning his knife in his hands.  
  
~*~  
  
Matriarch Sibyl paced the floor of her war tent, her gnarled wooden scepter in her hands. She paced through bright light and deep shadow, tracing the mottled pattern her skylights cast upon the floor.  
  
“To think, she offers us sovereignty so freely…” Sibyl mused, thoughtfully stroking her chin. “She offers us our independence as if she were merely giving us her favorite cloak. What are your thoughts, captain?”  
  
Paola stood at attention by the wall, her spear in the crook of her arm.  
  
“Frankly, my lady? I do not believe we are in a position to turn away possible allies,” Paola said. “The princess’ retinue is small, but even a small group in the right place can make all the difference in the world. Perhaps we could even invite them to join us in raiding that Imperial demonstration tonight.”  
  
“Perhaps,” Sibyl mused. “You seem awfully trusting of the princess and her people.”  
  
“I know you would advise caution, my lady,” Paola said. “But these are desperate times, for all of us. I trust the Sparrow’s judgment in bringing her here. I trust that the princess’ offer of sovereignty and alliance was sincere.”  
  
“Or the promise of independence is blinding you to the risks,” Sibyl murmured. She sighed, reaching up and surreptitiously fixing a lock of hair that had slipped out of place.  
  
A shadow flitted behind the tent flap. “My lady,” they said, muffled.  
  
“Report.”  
  
Kat stepped into the war tent, bowed, before snapping to attention, her spear against her shoulder.  
  
“Matriarch. Our scouts have reported heavy Imperial activity on the edge of the forest. They believe that the Imperial convoy has left Hawk’s Landing ahead of schedule. They will be passing through the Feywood within the hour.”  
  
“This, we need…” Sibyl exhaled. “...We have little choice. We will not let this opportunity slip us by. The raid must proceed. Muster the Whitewings, and deploy the instant you are ready.”  
  
“Yes, ma’am.” Kat bowed, then hesitated. A flicker of worry flashed across her steel-blue eyes. “...Matriarch. There was another report...”  
  
“Go on.”  
  
“I-” Kat began, then glanced up sharply at a buzzing noise behind her. She stepped aside, pulling aside the tent flap just in time for Estelle to come crashing in.  
  
Estelle landed badly, stumbling into Kat’s arms, her spear clattering onto the floor. One of her wings was utterly shredded, and it hung, limp and useless, down her back.  
  
“Est,” Paola whispered, urgent, as Estelle sucked in a haggard breath. “Est, what happened?”  
  
“They were followed!” Estelle gasped, fear wide in her eyes. “They were fucking _followed!_ ”  
  
~*~  
  
A shadow exploded through the fog, scattering clouds of sprites like embers from a fallen brazier. A Ranger died gasping, skewered through the throat by a jet-black dagger blade that nailed them to the tree behind. Two arrows pinged off of its armor in flashes of sparks. It coiled its inhuman legs beneath it and pounced- two more pixies reduced to bloody smears and tatters of iridescent wings.  
  
The assassin lifted its armored head, searching the trees with its single, unblinking eye. Its eye flashed, as if it had caught the scent, before plunging onwards into the woods, bathed in a hellish red light.  
  
Inquisitor Thorn stormed into the clearing in the assassin’s wake, sword in one hand, hand crossbow in the other, Sergeant Mishima and a legion of Imperial troopers following at her heels.  
  
Immediately, arrows whistled into them. Mishima barked an order to return fire, and the air filled with the cacophony of battle, arrows and crossbow bolts falling like rain.  
  
Thorn ducked under a whizzing arrow. She saw a glint of metal in the fog, swatted aside a thrusting rapier, and shot a Fey fighter, point-blank, in the chest. The girl stared, wide-eyed, as she gagged on the bolt transfixing her ribs. Thorn slapped the girl’s corpse onto the ground, her impish features twisting into a wild, killing grin.    
  
“Find the princess!” Inquisitor Thorn screamed. “ ** _Find the princess!_** ”  
  
~*~


	5. Firebrand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “The Empire has arrived, and in forces too great for your ragtag bunch to face alone. Your hope of a unified Rebellion is just a candle in the wind. The might of the Umbra Empire comes crashing down, aiming to snuff out the spark before it catches fire…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It took me awhile, but it's finally here. I hope you'll think it was worth the wait. ^^

~*~  
  
The Imperial convoy crept through the woods, crunching through the undergrowth, their steam engines grunting and snorting like great beasts of burden. A dozen trucks, each one bristling with Imperial troops, escorting a platform shrouded in a canvas tarp- Professor Cross’ prototype, the crown jewel of the formation. Inquisitor Nyx rode on the project platform, hands folded in her lap, watching the trees. Professor Cross rode beside her, grinning with manic anticipation.  
  
“Years ago…” Cross mused. “Years ago, the finest minds in the Umbra Empire came together to create a device. They called it ‘Project Astra’, because they believed that our future lay not here, on this world, but among the stars… can you imagine? The ambition? The audacity?”  
  
Cross chuckled.  
  
“You weren’t born in the Empire, so I can’t imagine it’s burned itself into your memory the way it has for us,” she smiled. “Project Astra was supposed to change the world. And it did- not with its success, but with the catastrophe its failure unleashed...”  
  
Nyx looked up sharply, hearing something through the trees. A faint whistling, one that might almost pass for birdsong, if not for the voices. The convoy rumbled to a halt, and Nyx stood up, peering suspiciously into the woods.  
  
“Why have we stopped?” Cross wondered, impatient.  
  
An Imperial trooper ran up to the project platform and bowed his head.  
  
“Ser. Our forward scouts report Imperial forces engaged in a battle against rebel forces up ahead. Shall we assist them, ser?”  
  
“Show me,” Nyx ordered.  
  
The trooper pressed a spyglass into her hands and she swept her gaze across the woods, searching, searching…  
  
Then she saw it. A flash of carrot-red hair, and a sword held aloft.  
  
“Hello, Vicky,” Nyx smiled. “It’s been awhile...”  
  
~*~  
  
From one moment to the next, the Feywood became a warzone. Arrows and crossbow bolts volleyed like rain; colored lights flashed through the trees, bolts of sizzling magic, the clashing sparks of blade against blade.  
  
The Empire’s assassin, long-limbed and sheathed in brass, led the charge. It prowled through the woods, its single, unblinking eye shining with a hellish red light, occasionally lifting its head as if sniffing the air. None dared to get in its way. Arrows, spears, rapiers, estocs- the Fey were well-armed and well prepared to face the Empire’s vaunted mail armor. But nothing they had could so much as scratch the assassin’s armored shell. Where the assassin went, the Fey scattered- or were smashed aside in ruined heaps.  
  
Kat of the Whitewings, guardian of the forest, held the line regardless. She plunged her spear into a trooper’s chest, before wrenching the blade free with a shriek of metal and a spray of mail rings. She stabbed another trooper in the chest and held him aloft, yanking him forward before his fellow could shoot her. A crossbow bolt buried itself in the trooper’s back, and she leveraged him on her spear, hurling him into the undergrowth. His dead weight slammed into the shooter with a crunch.  
  
Kat held her spear aloft, the blade glinting in the Feywood’s otherworldly, prismatic gleam.  
  
“Resist!” Kat cried out. “ _Resist!_ ”  
  
~*~  
  
In the forest canopy, from their remote treetop platform, the party bore witness to the horror they had unleashed. Haru stared, teary-eyed, at the bloodbath unfolding before her, a hand clamped over her mouth. Makoto stood stony-faced at her side, her lips pressed into a line. Neither of them could find the words to say in the face of this massacre.  
  
“We gotta do something!” Ryuji blurted out.  
  
“Yeah, like leave,” Akira muttered. “Leaving sounds nice.”  
  
Ryuji rounded on him, baring his teeth. “Are you fucking serious? You’re just gonna leave these people to die?!”  
  
“What, you’re a fucking hero all of a sudden?” Akira snarled. “We don’t owe these people a damn thing! All I care about is getting out of here in one piece!”  
  
“I can’t believe you! Are you really that-”  
  
“Are we seriously going to do this _now_?!” Ann demanded. “Stop it! Stop it, both of you!”  
  
“This is a nightmare,” Haru said, the weight of her voice cutting through the din. She turned, a stunned, distant look in her eyes, twisting the Fire Emblem around her finger.  
  
“This is a nightmare,” Haru echoed, blinking back tears. “...And I brought it here.”  
  
“Princess…” Ann began, but stopped, glancing at the floor.  
  
Shiho worked her jaw, but said nothing. The Empire may have been after Haru, but it was Shiho who’d led them here, to the Feywood. The Fey were her supposed friends and allies, but she led the Empire right to their doorstep.  
  
Paola of the Whitewings stumbled onto the platform, leaning heavily on the haft of her spear. One of the iridiescent, leaf-shaped wings at her shoulders had a ragged tear from where a crossbow bolt punched right through.  
  
Guilt welled up in Shiho’s chest and spilled out through her mouth.  
  
“Paola,” Shiho blurted out, “I’m sorry. But I didn’t know we were being followed. You have to believe-”  
  
“I know,” Paola said, swallowing hard. She limped over to the tree that formed the central pillar of their platform, and tied a length of rope around it, pulling it taut and inspecting it with a tug. Their platform was now connected to a set of lower platforms that would lead down to ground level- a consideration not often taken when everyone else in the Feywood had wings.  
  
“You have to escape,” Paola said, without preamble. “All of you. Take the zipline, get down to the forest floor, and run. The Whitewings will hold off the Empire long enough for you to get clear.”  
  
Makoto nodded. “Understood.”  
  
“Sounds good to me!” Akira called out.  
  
“No!” Haru cried, meeting Paola’s gaze. “If the Whitewings stand and fight, they’ll all be killed! You need to retreat. Scatter into the forest, take the paths too tight or too hidden for the Empire to follow. You can still get away! We’ll cover the evacuation!”  
  
“Speak for yourself!” Akira snapped. “I don’t know these people! They’re not payin’ me to bleed for ‘em! You guys stay and fight if you want. I’m getting out of here!”  
  
Akira yelped as he suddenly found his feet off the ground. Ryuji picked him up by his coat and slammed his back against the tree.  
  
“Ryuji!” Ann cried in alarm.  
  
Akira seethed. “Get your hands off of-”  
  
“You shut up!” Ryuji snapped. “I have just about had it with you! You don’t know why we should help these people? You really don’t know? Because we’re the good guys, you asshole! That’s what we do! We help people! We care about people! Have you _ever_ cared about anybody but _yourself_ in your entire fucking life? Have you?!”  
  
Akira’s eyes betrayed him. Ryuji followed Akira’s glance and found Ann over his shoulder. He seethed, and shoved Akira away.  
  
“Go, then,” Ryuji spat. “Do what you want. I’m helping these people.”  
  
Akira glowered at him. He turned on his heel, pulling a handkerchief out of his coat.  
  
“You fucking heroes are going to get yourselves killed,” Akira muttered. He coiled his handkerchief over the zipline, and vanished into the fog.  
  
A dreadful quiet settled over the group. Ryuji met their eyes in turn.  
  
“...Anyone else?” he asked.  
  
Nobody said anything. He gave Haru a nod.  
  
“...I have a plan,” Haru said, fighting down the anxiety rising in her chest. “If we can keep the Empire’s attention on us, then the Fey can withdraw without taking further losses.”  
  
Haru looked up, meeting Paola’s eyes across the platform.  
  
“This is _not_ a last stand,” Haru declared. “The Fey will endure.”  
  
Paola smiled, but it was a troubled smile. She sighed, and shook her head.  
  
“That decision may not be ours to make…”  
  
~*~  
  
Mishima winced as an arrow whistled past his head. He threw himself behind a hefty tree trunk, yelling orders to take cover, as two more arrows thudded into the wood at his back. He swallowed hard, his heart pounding in his ears. Adrenaline pooled in his gut and made bile rise in his throat. He shuddered.  
  
“Stay down!” He called out, his voice hoarse. “Return fire only when you have a clear target!”  
  
A nearby trooper rose from his position behind a fallen log and braced his crossbow against his shoulder, taking aim. The instant he lifted his head out of cover, a Ranger’s arrow plunged into his eye. He screamed and convulsed, blood gushing out from his helm.  
  
Mishima watched him die, his stomach churning. He loaded his crossbow and wound back the bolt until it locked into place, desperately focusing on his weapon instead of the trooper’s wet, messy demise just a few feet away.  
  
Then he saw it- shadows moving strangely through the fog, heard the rustle of flitting wings-  
  
“Sergeant!” someone cried.  
  
A crossbow bolt whistled past. The charging pixie darted aside at the last moment, braced her estoc in a two-handed grip, and impaled the trooper who leapt to Mishima’s defense.  
  
The pixie’s estoc, made not to slash, but to pierce and pierce well, punched through the trooper’s mail as if it were paper.  
  
“Kaoru!” Mishima cried, only knowing him by his voice in his dying throes.  
  
The pixie braced a boot on Kaoru’s sagging chest and wrenched her blade out with a spray of red. She pivoted, rounding on Mishima, preparing to skewer him in turn-  
  
Mishima shot her in the chest.  
  
She stumbled back, her sword thudding to the ground. She reflexively reached up, pale hands grasping at the crossbow bolt transfixing her chest. She fell to her knees in the grass.  
  
For a few, agonizing moments, she did not die.  
  
She gazed up at Mishima, blood dribbling out of her mouth. Her eyes were stunning, shimmering, flecked with color. Mishima gazed into those kaleidoscope eyes, a knot forming in his chest.  
  
Then a crossbow bolt burst through the girl’s skull in a ghastly spray of red.  
  
Mishima recoiled, the pixie’s blood spattering across his visor. He reached up and hurled his stifling helm to the ground. He sucked in a breath and pressed his back against a tree, shaking.  
  
Inquisitor Thorn appeared beside him, oblivious to Mishima’s discomfort. She callously kicked the pixie’s body aside, sliding a new bolt into her hand crossbow. She twisted the ring around her finger, and a luminescent, stormy-gray arrow pointed off into the distance. She grit her teeth.  
  
“Status report,” Thorn snapped, barely sparing Mishima a passing glance.  
  
Mishima took a shuddering breath, trailing his gloved fingers through his hair.  
  
“Resistance is… heavier… than we anticipated…”  
  
“The tracker is getting too far ahead,” Thorn muttered scornfully. “We need to push forward.”  
  
Thorn whistled, and gathered the tattered remnants of her company together. Mishima gazed out at the assembled troops, a spark of defiance welling up in his chest.  
  
“Inquisitor,” Mishima said carefully. “We’ve taken heavy losses. Perhaps a retreat-”  
  
“Coward!” Thorn snapped. “The princess is in our reach! Forward! Forward!”  
  
Mishima grit his teeth.  
  
“They’re killing us!” Mishima seethed.  
  
“Then _kill them back_!”  
  
~*~  
  
The heart of the Feywood thrummed with activity as Rangers and the Whitewings hurried to the frontlines. Pixies ventured into battle with little more than rapiers, stilettos, cloth tunics, and defiant hearts. Rangers threw grappling lines into the trees and hoisted themselves aloft, choosing a perch from which to make their killing ground.  
  
War had come to the Feywood, and all the chaos that brought with it. Haru and her retinue gathered in the square, the party all-but forgotten in the madness of battle.  
  
“Take these,” Ann said, handing out linkpearls. “If we’re going to split up, then at least we’ll be able to talk to each other.”  
  
Makoto, Haru, Shiho, and Yusuke all accepted one of the pearl earrings, shimmering with enchantment. But when she got to Ryuji, she paused, his hand lingering on hers.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Ryuji said quietly.  
  
“No,” Ann breathed. “You were right. You were totally right. I just… don’t want to not see him again.”  
  
“He’ll come back,” Ryuji murmured, clipping a linkpearl to his ear. “He always comes back.”  
  
“I can sense him within the River,” Yusuke said gently. “He is unharmed. For the moment.”  
  
Ryuji, despite being a trained illusionist to whom magic was a fact of life, didn’t know what to make of this whole ‘energy of living things’ business. Still, it was the thought that counted.  
  
“...Thanks, buddy,” he said.  
  
“Ser Fox,” Haru said. She tensed as the others turned to her, still not quite feeling like she belonged. “How far do your senses reach? Can you perceive the shape of the battle?”  
  
Yusuke dipped his head in respect. “The River flows red today, Princess. But yes, I can do this.”  
  
Shiho spoke up. “If the Fox can sense the enemy’s movements, then we may well be able to coordinate a retreat…”  
  
“None of this matters if Matriarch Sibyl is determined to stand her ground,” Makoto said.  
  
“Leave that to me,” Haru said.  
  
Makoto sighed. “...Princess. If I may…”  
  
“I know what you’re going to say,” Haru said softly. She took Makoto’s hand and squeezed. “And I know you will say it out of a desire to keep me safe. But I will not turn my back on these people, regardless of if my father deems them citizens of Corona or not.”  
  
Makoto took a deep breath, but said nothing. She squeezed Haru’s hand, and nodded.  
  
Haru turned to Ann and Ryuji.  
  
“Lions. If the Fox acts as spotter, can I trust you to divert the Empire’s attention?”  
  
Ann and Ryuji exchanged glances. Ryuji bumped an elbow against hers.  
  
“If you need a show, we’ve got it,” Ann said.  
  
“We’ll give ‘em something to chase,” Ryuji grinned.  
  
Paola’s eyes flitted among the group, a warmth welling up in her chest. Hope flickered in the air like a candleflame. Then she turned, seeing a forest-green blur drop out of the trees. A cloaked Ranger fell to one knee before her, pulling back his hood.  
  
“Captain Paola,” he began. “We have held the first assault, but Imperial reinforcements are streaming in. We will not be able to hold them again.”  
  
Paola opened her mouth, then closed it again. She took a deep breath. “Where are my sisters?”  
  
“Kat is leading the repulse. Her line is holding. For now,” the Ranger swallowed. “Estelle has gathered the wounded and our noncombatants.”  
  
Paola was quiet for a long moment.  
  
The Ranger stared at the ground. “Shall we… retreat, ser?”  
  
Paola exhaled. “...The Matriarch has ordered the Whitewings to fight to the last.”  
  
“No!” Haru gasped. She turned, and saw the auburn gleam of Sibyl’s wings further down the square. She turned on her heel and marched, Makoto calling to her in vain.  
  
Shiho stepped forward. “Ranger.”  
  
He looked up, blinking. “S-Sparrow…?”  
  
“Evacuate the Feywood,” Shiho said, her resolve growing with every word. “Guide the Fey into the forest. As many as will follow you.”  
  
Paola looked stricken. “But… the Whitewings-”  
  
“Are our trusted allies,” Shiho said, standing firm, “but they do not command the Rangers.”  
  
The Ranger stood, and clapped a fist to his breast in salute.  
  
“I serve, Sparrow.”  
  
“Get your men in the trees and lay down covering fire,” Shiho ordered. “Any Imperial who so much as looks at the fleeing column gets an arrow in their eye! Now go! _Go!_ ”  
  
~*~  
  
“Forward!” Thorn demanded. “ _Forward!_ ”  
  
No matter how petulantly Thorn insisted they move, the Feywood’s defenders pushed them back. She swore and stamped her feet in frustration, even as volleys of arrows and crossbow bolts rained past her, and the ranks of troopers behind her grew perilously thin.  
  
Mishima trudged beside her, his eyes distant, unfocused. Kaoru’s dying scream echoed through his thoughts. He was a good kid. Just a kid. All the way from the garrison at Larksnettle, only to die, abruptly and without honor, at the whim of an Emperor who didn’t even know his name. And his killer, the pixie girl… Mishima saw her, in his mind. Pale fingers feebly grasping for the crossbow bolt he’d planted in her chest. Blood welling up around her lips. Gleaming, inhuman, kaleidoscope eyes.  
  
Mishima shuddered, his thoughts roiling in his head.  
  
Thorn couldn’t care less if she’d tried. All she saw was the luminescent trail leading into the heart of the Feywood, and at the end of the trail, the princess- her prize.  
  
If only they could get there, first.  
  
An emerald gleam pulsed through the forest and made Thorn’s hair go frizzy, crackling with the Feyri’s heathen magic. She scowled in contempt, before feeling the earth move beneath her feet. She jerked away as the tree she’d been using as cover uprooted itself. It reared up as if alive, flexing its branches like many-fingered limbs, traceries of emerald light shining like veins beneath its bark.  
  
The awakened elemental coiled its branches into a massive fist. Thorn ducked beneath a blow that smashed a trio of troopers off their feet with a crunch. Thorn barked in frustration as she darted aside another blow that crushed a trooper into the ground, a bloody smear only contained by the remains of his armor.  
  
Thorn gasped as wooden fingers clamped around her legs. The elemental lifted her up as if to study her, two orbs of emerald magic shining upon its trunk in the semblance of eyes. Thorn chopped her sword down, only for it to wedge in the wood. She gritted her teeth, raised her hand crossbow, and thunked a bolt into the elemental’s eye.  
  
It winced, as if in pain, but it didn’t let her go. Its grip closed like a vice around her, and Thorn choked, her legs creaking within the creature’s crushing grip…  
  
There was a sharp bang, like thunder directly overhead, and the elemental exploded. It came apart in a spray of splintered wood and coruscating, sizzling magic, and Thorn dropped to the ground, sucking in a pained breath. She staggered to her feet.  
  
A battle cry split the air. Kat of the Whitewings, clad in streaming blue, dove out of the trees, her spear glinting in the light.  
  
Thorn snapped her aim to the pixie’s chest before remembering that she hadn’t reloaded. She set her hand crossbow aside, readying her sword.  
  
Kat froze in mid-air, abruptly bound by an arcane sigil. An instant later, the glyph flashed and hurled Kat through the undergrowth, wreathed in crackling energy.  
  
Thorn took an offered hand that still wisped smoke and embers of otherworldly flame, and let Inquisitor Ophelia Nyx pull her to her feet.  
  
“Hello, Vicky,” Nyx smiled.  
  
“What are you doing here, Lia?” Thorn sighed.  
  
“I was in the neighborhood,” Nyx smiled. “I thought you could use some help?”  
  
Thorn glanced up at the wrecked troop truck still tangled in knots of deanimated wood. Troops were dismounting and forming up to attack, swelling the depleted ranks of Thorn’s company, while the Fey took this lull in the battle to hastily pull back.  
  
“You almost ran me over,” Thorn grumbled.  
  
“You’re welcome,” Nyx said. She reached out to fondly lay a hand in Thorn’s hair.  
  
Thorn flinched and slapped Nyx’ hand away. She glowered up at the taller woman, adjusting the tracking ring on her finger.  
  
“Why are you _really_ here, Lia?” Thorn demanded. “Here to take the credit after I did all the work?”  
  
“I’m here to help,” Nyx said, raising a hand in surrender. “Can’t I help?”  
  
Thorn slipped a fresh bolt into her hand crossbow and wound it back until it clicked. She sighed, shooting Nyx a look halfway between warm and wary.  
  
“This is _my_ operation, Lia,” Thorn muttered, marching forward into the gloom. “Don’t get in my way.”  
  
~*~  
  
“Resist!” Matriarch Sibyl cried. “ _Resist!_ ”  
  
“Matriarch Sibyl!” Haru cried, running into the square.  
  
Sibyl turned, dismayed. “Princess. You should not be here-”  
  
“Matriarch,” Haru pleaded, “you must order a retreat!”  
  
Sibyl’s gaze grew hard. “I’ll not have you run roughshod over the will of _my_ people-”  
  
“You don’t have to do this!” Haru pressed. “You don’t have to stay here until your woods are overrun! You must flee!”  
  
“Flee?!” Sibyl snapped. “You would have us abandon our home? You would have us run, like you did, when the Empire began the Conquest?”  
  
Haru squirmed. “...Yes. I ran. I ran, so I could live… so I could fight again, when the time was right-”  
  
“The time is now, Princess!” Sibyl seethed. “From the moment the Umbra Empire set foot in these lands, we Fey have stood our ground. We stood our ground, when you would not! We fought! We died! We bled for this war, and we bled the enemy in turn. If the Empire wants war, we will give them war! We will fight to the last man, woman, and child, and we will water the soil of the Feywood with every last drop of blood the Empire will provide!”  
  
“You will lead your people to their deaths!” Haru protested. “This is insane!”  
  
Sibyl stared at Haru, a pained look in her eyes.  
  
“This is _duty_ , child,” Sibyl whispered. “And if you learn anything as the heir to a nation, let it be the meaning of that word.”  
  
Sibyl raised her staff, the wood bound in climbing ivy, and struck it against the ground. Emerald light surged into the ground as if her staff was taking root, the tendrils of seething magic shooting across the forest floor and into the distance. The Feywood creaked and groaned as wood elementals stirred from their slumber and joined the fray.  
  
“Do you see, Umbran dogs?” Sibyl declared, power thrumming in the air. “The Feywood itself rises against you! We defy you, invader! I defy you! Even if this forest burns to cinders around me, _I shall not be moved!_ ”  
  
~*~  
  
No matter the strength of Sibyl’s conviction, the tide of battle was turning against her.  
  
Yusuke could feel it. Though he was blind to the physical world, he could see the River flowing in the shadowed world of astral space. In that halfway place, the light of life shone like a flame. In Yusuke’s eyes, the Feywood was already burning.  
  
Imperial troops moved like a charcoal smudge across his senses. Compared to other non-magical souls, they were strangely blurred and faded- marked by a legacy Yusuke could only guess at. Mages shone like torches in Yusuke’s vision; he saw Ann and Ryuji across the woods, blazing like twin beacons of golden lightning and crimson fire; he saw Matriarch Sibyl ablaze with emerald light, her power sinking into the earth like the roots of a great tree.  
  
He saw Haru, the Fire Emblem shining like a star on her finger-  
  
-and he saw the shadow shooting towards her, like a moth to a flame, or a knife in the dark.  
  
“Princess!” he cried.  
  
The assassin exploded out of the trees, a bullet cased in brass, arm blades flashing. Yusuke and Makoto both went for their swords-  
  
-but Paola of the Whitewings was first to strike.  
  
With a cry that rang out through the heart of the Feywood, Paola slashed her spear into the brass-armored assassin. Her blade clashed against its jet-black daggers with a sound like a thunderclap. The assassin leapt back, its momentum lost. It landed and brandished its arm blades, its hellish red eye flitting among those assembled- Paola. Yusuke. Shiho. Makoto. Haru.  
  
It crossed its arms across its chest, and coiled its powerful legs beneath it. It exploded forward in a corkscrew spin, a lightning bolt of glinting metal.  
  
It smashed aside Paola’s second swing, and buried its blades in Sibyl’s chest.  
  
Sibyl stood and stared over the thing’s shoulder, her kaleidoscope eyes glittering with color. Yusuke lifted his head and watched, in astral space, as the luminescent threads tying Sibyl to her elementals swiftly and violently went out.  
  
“No!” Paola shrieked.  
  
Haru stared, and faltered, helpless. The assassin turned to regard her, bathing her in its single eye’s hellish red light.  
  
“You,” Haru breathed, aghast.  
  
Paola screamed and thrust her spear forward. The assassin contemptuously slammed her aside with a kick. It coiled its legs beneath it and pounced-  
  
Something slammed into it and hurled it aside. The assassin tumbled across the ground, beset by a beast- a phantom, coalesced out of wind and fog.  
  
Shiho stepped forward, her hand framing the wooden icon that hung from her neck- a carved idol of a great bear, shimmering with silver light.  
  
“Smash it, Callisto!” Shiho cried out, and her spirit-beast obliged. Callisto smashed its massive paws down into the assassin’s brass armor, each tremendous blow pounding like a discordant church bell, warping and scoring the metal.  
  
But the assassin would not be deterred. It stabbed its arm blades into Callisto’s stomach, and Shiho gasped, clutching her gut as phantom pains shot through her abdomen. Callisto’s ethereal form flickered and skipped, like heat haze, the fog around her wounds growing frayed and tattered.  
  
Callisto roared in pain and frustration. She hoisted the assassin up in her crushing grip, before hurling it across the clearing. The assassin twisted in the air, attempting to land on its feet. Instead, it exploded through a tree trunk with a wood-splintering crash.  
  
It rose from the undergrowth, coiled its legs beneath it yet again, and pounced.  
  
Makoto rose to meet it head-on, her sword slapping the diving assassin to the ground. Makoto caught a glimpse of its breastplate, fractured from Callisto slamming it against the tree. Its armor was fracturing, the cracks gleaming in the faint morning light.  
  
The assassin said something in its inhuman language, a rasp of metal against metal. It launched itself at her, arm blades flashing in a flurry of blows. Makoto found herself driven back under the assault, struggling to turn aside such deft, agile weapons, her own blade clumsy and slow by comparison.  
  
Yusuke’s cane sword carved a ragged diagonal slice down the assassin’s back. The assassin shrieked in what might have been pain, forcing its attention towards a second opponent. Even splitting its focus, neither Yusuke nor Makoto could slip past its blades.  
  
An arrow whistled past and scored a line across the assassin’s side with a shriek of metal.  
  
A second arrow deflected off its torso, further splintering the brass plate beneath.  
  
A third punched straight through.  
  
Makoto balked at the sight. There was no dense, wet impact, no spray of gore. Only sparks, and a spray of chipped, broken armor, and the darkness of the hollow beneath.  
  
“It’s empty?!” Makoto gasped.  
  
“It’s a Hollow!” Shiho cried, nocking another arrow and letting it fly. This one struck the assassin dead center and stuck fast. “One of the Empire’s machine-knights, a soldier without a soul!”  
  
“It is an aberration!” Yusuke called out. “It drains the magic of those around it… feeds on it… as if it’s trying to… to…”  
  
What? Yusuke wondered. Heal itself? _Remember_ itself?  
  
The assassin’s blade came flashing back around and he caught the blade against his, his arms shaking beneath the assassin’s inhuman strength. Yusuke grit his teeth, staring down the silhouette in astral space where the assassin stood, the hole in the world where a person should have been.  
  
“What are you?” Yusuke demanded. “Who _were_ you?”  
  
For all his wonder, all Yusuke received was a scrape of blades and a brass-cased boot to the chest. He tumbled into the undergrowth, gasping. The assassin knocked Makoto’s blade aside and dove after Yusuke. It planted its knees on his chest and pinned his sword arm to the ground, raising a gauntleted hand, ready to plunge a katar through his heart.  
  
When suddenly, it stopped. It lifted its head, as if scenting the air.  
  
Across the clearing, rising from her spot beside the prone Matriarch Sibyl, Haru stood, the Fire Emblem shining like a star upon her finger.  
  
“I believe you’re looking for me,” she said, resolute, meeting the assassin’s unblinking gaze.  
  
The assassin dove at her, arm blades extended. Haru raised her hand and slammed it aside with a curtain of golden fire, blasting it out of the air and sending it scrambling across the ground. It stood and shuddered, its armor creaking, dripping at the seams. Haru opened her palm and engulfed the assassin in another pillar of heat and light.  
  
In Yusuke’s eyes, the Feywood was ablaze with the golden Light of Corona, save for the silhouette at its heart, drinking in the radiant power, tendrils of magic forming a tracery of veins across its shadowed form. And within that shadow, there was a pinprick of light that pulsed with the energy flaring around it. A flicker. Like a candleflame. Or a heartbeat.  
  
“Do you see it?” Yusuke murmured.  
  
The assassin emerged from the flames, scorched and staggering, but still standing. Tendrils of fire danced across the surface of its armor, glinting along the cracks in its breastplate and seeping inside- gathering in its core in a mockery of a heart.  
  
“I see it,” Makoto growled, readying her sword.  
  
The assassin took a few halting steps, before pouncing once again. Haru dove aside, tucking into a roll.  
  
An arrow punched into the assassin from behind, then another, then another, but the assassin’s course would not be swayed. It stared at Haru with a single-minded intensity, drawn to the radiant light of the crest on her finger. With Sibyl’s power extinguished, no one in the Feywood burned nearly as bright.  
  
Haru stood tall beneath the assassin’s crimson gaze. But her eyes strayed to a point of crimson light, blooming from within the assassin’s armored chest.  
  
Haru felt a hand on her shoulder. She looked up, and Makoto pulled her behind, staring down the daemon in brass.  
  
“No Lady shall fall while her Knight defends her,” Makoto intoned, her voice clear and firm. She raised her sword. A white light traced a pattern up the spine of her blade, until at last her whole sword shone like lightning in her grasp.  
  
The assassin pounced, shrieking in its inhuman voice.  
  
Makoto plunged her blade into the Hollow’s would-be heart, and the whole of the Feywood went ablaze with light.  
  
~*~  
  
Across the woods, a lion formed of white lightning shivered the forest with its roar. The Imperial column balked in the face of the beast, panic flashing through their ranks. A courageous few kept their wits long enough to shoulder their crossbows and fire- but their bolts stuck fast in the beast’s hide, to no avail.  
  
“Forward!” Their sergeant called. “Forward!”  
  
The sergeant ushered the column away from the beast, towards another break in the trees and the promise of smaller, softer targets. But as the column pivoted around the lion’s living roadblock, a second lion plunged out of the canopy and slammed into their midst. Crimson fire crackled along her sinuous form. She and her partner raised their heads and roared.  
  
Terror gripped the company. Wisps of magic burst like firecrackers among them, flashes of crimson and gold that spurred their anxiety into outright panic. The company broke, despite their sergeant’s wailing protests, and scattered back into the trees.  
  
Ryuji gestured, and his phantasmal lion melted into wisps of magic around him. Ann waved, as if to a crowd, and her lioness of crimson fire vanished like smoke. They exchanged exhausted glances, before Ann affectionately punched him in the arm.  
  
“Wonder how everybody else is doing,” Ryuji muttered.  
  
“Do you think Akira’s doing okay?” Ann wondered.  
  
“Hell if I know,” Ryuji said, callous. Ann punched him in the arm again, a bit harder this time.  
  
“He’s our _friend_ , you jackass.”  
  
“Is that what he is?” Ryuji shrugged. “Ann, he might’ve been good for a few laughs now and then, but you know what he’s like.”  
  
“I do,” Ann said. “Which is why I know he’ll be back.”  
  
“And how many more times are we gonna take him back?” Ryuji sighed. “Do you think, someday, he’ll suddenly wake up and care for something more than his coinpurse? He cares about money, Ann. Getting it, spending it, having a good time in between. He doesn’t care who he does it _with_. He’d sell us out to the Empire if the price was good enough.”  
  
“Don’t say that,” Ann huffed. “You saw him. He cares about us. About me!”  
  
“ _I_ care about you!” Ryuji snapped. “And if this is gonna bother you so much-”  
  
They jumped as an explosion of white light thundered in the distance, shivering the ground beneath their feet. They ducked, wincing, Ryuji’s arm instinctively around Ann’s shoulders. When the tremor subsided, Ryuji lifted his head, gazing warily through the trees.  
  
“What the hell was that…?” Ryuji muttered.  
  
Ann reached up, tugging at her linkpearl. “Akira? Captain, Princess? Can anyone hear me? Is everybody okay?”  
  
~*~  
  
Akira crept through the woods on the fringes of the battle, watching scattered Whitewings and Rangers ushering civilian Fey to safety, and watching the ranks of their pursuers grow thinner and thinner. Compared to the tangle of his thoughts and the buzz of adrenaline in his limbs, the woods were getting downright sparse.  
  
Not sparse enough, apparently, because a handful of Imperial soldiers were blocking the road, and Akira was left to puzzle how best to get past. Akira pressed his back to a tree trunk and clung to the shadows, watching, waiting for them to move on so he could slip past.  
  
A star erupted on the horizon. The troopers stared through the trees, gasping, murmuring. Akira snapped his gaze up in alarm, but managed not to make a sound. At least, until his linkpearl began to shimmer.  
  
_“Akira?”_ _  
__  
_ The very sound of Ann’s voice was enough to touch a nerve. And even though a voice sent through a linkpearl wasn’t broadcast to nearby listeners, Ann’s voice came in as loud and as clear as if she were right beside him. Akira jumped, and swore.  
  
“Fuck! Ann!” He hissed. “I’m trying to _sneak_ here!”  
  
The Imperial troops whirled at the sound. Akira groaned in frustration and launched himself into battle, his dagger flashing in his hands. He stabbed a trooper through the chest, grabbed his crossbow and shot a second, whirling around and slicing open the throat of a third. Akira leapt, his coattails flying, towards a fourth silhouette in the trees.  
  
A blade clashed against his and he stumbled, fumbling the landing. He darted beneath a swipe, hooking his dagger around the other blade and wrenching it from their grasp. The sickle thumped into the undergrowth and Akira rose, his dagger to his opponent’s throat, a hand of magical fire held to his.  
  
Akira blinked. His foe hesitated, also.  
  
In the eerie green firelight, Akira saw midnight-blue skin, and gleaming white eyes.  
  
“...Aki,” Inquisitor Nyx blinked. Her lips curled into a smile. “You never write.”  
  
Akira sighed, lowering his dagger.  
  
“...Hello, Lia.”  
  
~*~  
  
The Hollow died in a blaze of white light, its brass armor crumpling in on itself before exploding in a shrieking shockwave of brilliant, coruscating energy. The blast hurled the party off their feet. Makoto pulled Haru into her arms, shielding her eyes against the glare. But Yusuke, who saw the world in an entirely different light, watched, in awe, as a tattered, slip of a silhouette rose out of the shattered armor and took shape in the clearing. A strong wind blew through the trees, scattering the fragments like embers in the wind. But there was still a voice- faint, rasping, but achingly clear.  
  
_“Free…”_  
  
Yusuke felt a warmth bloom through his chest. He felt the wind through his hair, ruffling his robe, heard the faintest sounds of rushing water and mighty wings. In the shadowed world of astral space, the clearing blazed with color. He stood there, arms wide, basking in the light.  
  
Then a crossbow bolt punched through his chest.  
  
Yusuke gagged. He stumbled back, tripped over a tree root, and fell to the ground, gasping.  
  
Haru squealed, clapping a hand over her mouth.  
  
A petulant voice snarled through the trees.  
  
“Do I have to do everything **_myself?!_** ”  
  
Haru gasped. Makoto grabbed her arm. Shiho nocked an arrow.  
  
Inquisitor Thorn took aim, and fired.  
  
~*~  
  
“What are you doing here?” Akira asked warily.  
  
“Right now? Talking,” Nyx teased. “Can’t a girl talk?”  
  
Akira shrugged. His eyes wandered down the line of Nyx’ jaw, tracing a path down her throat to the curve of her chest- and the gleaming badge of a stylized letter ‘ **I** ’.  
  
“...Sorry about your guys,” Akira nodded to the fallen troopers beside her.  
  
“No, you’re not,” Nyx smiled.  
  
Despite everything, Akira found himself smiling back. “...No, I’m not.”  
  
Nyx dispelled the ghostfire from her fingertips, leaving them to study each other with their own eyes. They were silhouetted in the fog and the dim morning light, Akira spinning his dagger in his hands. His grip on the blade was light, but it never made its way fully back into its sheath.  
  
“I like your coat,” Nyx began, tentative. “It’s very you. I’m rather fond of mine, myself.”  
  
“Yeah,” Akira frowned at the badge of the Inquisition at her breast. “You seem to be doing well.”  
  
“As are you,” Nyx said. “Rumor says you’re in the graces of Corona’s lost princess.”  
  
Akira’s dagger stilled in his hands. He exhaled. “...I don’t know where you heard that. I was just passing through here, so if you’ll excuse me…”  
  
Akira shouldered his way past. Nyx’s hand darted out and closed around his wrist.  
  
“Come on,” Nyx purred, feeling Akira go tense. “Can’t I ask you a little favor?”  
  
“I don’t do favors,” Akira said, frosty. “I make deals.”  
  
“Oh, Aki,” Nyx said. “Just hear me out. It’ll be just like old times… and besides. It’s not like you’re one of her ‘true believers’... are you?”  
  
Akira took a deep breath, and sighed.  
  
“...What did you have in mind?”  
  
~*~  
  
Hifumi smiled a wicked smile, snapping her binder shut.  
  
“Akira,” she said, rising from the table, “might I have a word?”  
  
Akira grinned, and went to usher Hifumi downstairs so they could talk in private. Ryuji balked and stared after him as he left, calling out down the stairs.  
  
“Are you for real, dude? Shit’s going down, and you’re just gonna hang with your ex?”  
  
“They’re going to talk off-screen?” Haru wondered, a hand over her mouth. “Can he do that? Can they do that?”  
  
“Akira and Nyx are across the forest,” Kana said, smiling. “Why would you be able to listen in?”  
  
“Oh man,” Ann grinned, giddy. “This is getting juicy.”  
  
Futaba grinned impishly.  
  
“Alright. Now, whose turn is it…? Oh, _yeah_...”  
  
~*~  
  
Shiho’s shot found Thorn an instant too late. Thorn got thrown off her feet by the arrow in her chest, a moment after Makoto choked, a crossbow bolt in her collarbone.  
  
Makoto sagged into Haru’s arms, seething with pain, tears welling up in her eyes. Shiho moved to help prop her up, but Haru shook her head.  
  
“Help him,” Haru said, nodding to Yusuke. Shiho touched her pendant and summoned Callisto in a wisp of fog, the ghostly bear pulling Yusuke into her strong arms.  
  
Paola emerged from the woods, her armor cracked, her breathing ragged. Her breath hitched at the sight of Sibyl, lying broken on the ground. Paola fell to her knees, tearing strips of fabric from her tunic to bind the vicious wounds in Sibyl’s stomach. Sibyl was alive, if only just, murmuring, delirious with pain. Callisto lowered herself onto all fours. Sibyl joined Yusuke on the great bear’s back.  
  
“She can’t carry three,” Shiho murmured, anxious.  
  
“Go,” Haru urged, Makoto leaning on her shoulder. “I’ll take care of Mako.”  
  
“Stop right there!”  
  
The voice cut across the clearing. They looked up-  
  
-and found Mishima kneeling beside Inquisitor Thorn’s crumpled form, his crossbow aimed squarely at Haru’s heart.  
  
Haru pressed her lips into a line.  
  
“Go,” Haru echoed. Shiho glanced at her.  
  
“But-”  
  
“Go.”  
  
Shiho nodded. She and Paola bundled Yusuke and Matriarch Sibyl away, leaving Haru and Makoto in Mishima’s sights.  
  
“...Alright,” Mishima said, his aim wavering for a moment. “Alright. They can go. But you, princess. You’re coming with me.”  
  
Haru didn’t budge. She took a deep breath and sighed, settling Makoto’s weight on her shoulder.  
  
“What is your name?” she asked.  
  
Mishima blinked. He growled. “...My name is Yuuki Mishima. I am the sergeant of the Larksnettle Garrison, seconded to the service of Inquisitor Victoria Thorn.”  
  
Haru nodded sadly.  
  
“...You’ve come a long way from home,” Haru said. “I am Haru Okumura, the Lost Princess of Corona. This woman is in my service-”  
  
“Stalling me won’t work!” Mishima snapped, his aim trembling. “You hear that, Princess? You’re coming with me!”  
  
“I’m not stalling,” Haru said levelly. She looked at Thorn, an arrow transfixing her chest, fighting for consciousness and shivering in pain. “...Take her.”  
  
Mishima blinked. “What?”  
  
“Believe me when I say, neither of us has time to waste,” Haru said. “Take her. Put down your crossbow. Get her to a healer, and I shall do the same.”  
  
Mishima was speechless. He worked his jaw, searching for the words, finding nothing. Haru turned, and began ushering Makoto into the woods.  
  
Mishima took in the clearing- from the shattered remains of the tracker, to Thorn’s prone form beside him. Images flashed across his eyes, seared into his memory. Kaoru’s scream. Kaleidoscope eyes.  
  
Mishima grit his teeth.  
  
“ _Look at this!_ ” Mishima screamed. “All this… this madness! You did this, princess! You could have followed in your father’s footsteps, you could have stopped all of this before it started! You could have turned yourself in! We could have had peace!”  
  
“At what cost?” Haru fired back. “Your peace only comes with chains. 'Keep your head down.' 'Keep quiet.' 'Submit.' That’s not peace- that’s silence! That’s surrender! And yes, it’s true, surrender may have been what my father chose. But I am not my father. I am the crown princess of Corona, the Princess of Light. And if fate endeavors that I should become Queen… then it shall be as Queen to a _free_ people.”  
  
Mishima swallowed hard, trailing a hand through his hair. He kept his crossbow trained on Haru, though his eyes flicked to Makoto leaning on her shoulder.  
  
“...Your knight, there,” Mishima said. “What’s her name?”  
  
“She is Captain Makoto Niijima, the Last Knight of Corona,” Haru said, adding softly. “She is… very dear to me.”  
  
“A soldier,” Mishima said, his voice growing ragged. “A soldier would understand. I’m just doing my duty, that’s all this is! I have a job to do! I have a job to do, _just like you!_ ”  
  
Haru heard the haggard desperation in Mishima’s voice. She exhaled.  
  
“...Do your duty, sergeant.”  
  
Haru turned her back on him.  
  
“Stop!” Mishima snapped. “Stop right there!”  
  
Haru did not stop. She and Makoto limped into the woods, one shaky step at a time.  
  
“Stop!” Mishima screamed. “I said stop, Princess! _Stop, or I’ll shoot!_ **_Princess!_** ”  
  
Haru and Makoto vanished into the fog. Mishima grit his teeth.  
  
The bolt thudded into a tree trunk. Mishima gasped, his crossbow falling from his hands. He knelt, and held himself with shaking fingers, tears seeping into the bloodstained ground.  
  
~*~  
  
Professor Cross stood astride the project platform, gazing up at the grand vision of the Feywood in all its majesty. She breathed deep of the scents in the air- of blood and offal, of metal and earth, of wood, of ash, of death, and anticipation.  
  
It was time. It was time, and nothing would ruin her moment. Not the scouts reporting that their troops were being turned back, not the explosive death knell of one of the Empire’s most precious military assets, not even Inquisitor Nyx, returning to the convoy with a sly smile on her face and another secret in her collection.  
  
“Years ago…” Cross began. “Years ago, the greatest minds in the Umbra Empire gathered together to make history. Project Astra, a project that would change the world, spearheaded by nine mages and engineers without peer- the Nine Elder Magi.  
  
Something went wrong. Project Astra backfired. It unleashed a magical catastrophe that crippled our entire nation- stripping our populace of the ability to use magic, draining mana from the earth until nothing could grow in our soil. A day that will live in infamy… a day we call the Starfall.  
  
Project Astra’s power could not be contained. Even the Nine Elder Magi in harmony found its dreadful power too much to bear. They stood at the center of Project Astra’s collapse. The Starfall did more than drain them- it destroyed them, consumed them, ravaged them. It ruined them, and left them… Hollow.”  
  
Cross smiled, and pulled the tarp away from the project platform. Her prototype waited beneath, a series of spherical glass lenses nested within each other, each pane inscribed with a multitude of arcane sigils. Cross laid a hand on the control interface- a simple, unassuming crystal orb.  
  
“The Nine Hollows are the most feared of the Empire’s servants,” Cross said, the device shuddering to life at her touch. “But allow me to show you the device that will make the Nine obsolete.”  
  
Cross took something out of her robe- a stone, a chunk of magicite, charged with fire elemental energy. She held it up, so Nyx could see it, before slotting it into the device. Cross pressed a fingertip to the control orb and gently spun the orb around.  
  
The device shuddered, and the multiple gyroscopic arms twisted into place, each movement forming new patterns in the arcane traceries etched in the glass. With a final flourish, Cross pressed a button, and the many lenses aligned- a dozen magical formulae settling into place in an instant.  
  
The air shimmered, like heat haze, as the device’s many lenses focused arcane power into a single, iridescent cloud. The cloud thrummed and gathered into the machine, arcs of energy crackling between the different panes, the many intricate magic sigils shimmering as they came to life.  
  
There was a horrid shriek, and then a huge column of searing red energy exploded out of the device and up into the sky.  
  
“Burn this into your eyes, and into the pages of history!” Cross said, a manic grin crossing her lips. “Behold… the **_Astrolabe_**.”  
  
The burning pillar fell back to earth with catastrophic force, unleashing a tidal wave of fire throughout the Feywood. Cross laughed, euphoric in her success. She fired again, and again. Nyx watched, silent as a stone, as beam after beam of concentrated fire magic obliterated the Feywood and everything in it.  
  
The spiraling flames roared around them, drowning out the cries of the dead. Nyx stood, and stared out at the devastation, clutching the platform rail until her knuckles were white, as Professor Cross laughed and laughed.  
  
~*~


End file.
